The following is an excerpt from Man: The Dwelling Place of God by A.W. Tozer:

How to Try the Spirits
THESE ARE THE TIMES that try men’s souls. The Spirit has spoken expressly that in the latter times some should depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron. Those days are upon us and we cannot escape them; we must triumph in the midst of them, for such is the will of God concerning us.

Strange as it may seem, the danger today is greater for the fervent Christian than for the lukewarm and the self-satisfied. The seeker after God’s best things is eager to hear anyone who offers a way by which he can obtain them. He longs for some new experience, some elevated view of truth, some operation of the Spirit that will raise him above the dead level of religious mediocrity he sees all around him, and for this reason he is ready to give a sympathetic ear to the new and the wonderful in religion, particularly if it is presented by someone with an attractive personality and a reputation for superior godliness.

Now our Lord Jesus. that great Shepherd of the sheep, has not left His flock to the mercy of the wolves. He has given us the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit and natural powers of observation, and He expects us to avail ourselves of their help constantly. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good,” said Paul (I Thess. 5:21) . “Beloved, believe not every spirit,” wrote John, “but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (I John 4:1) . “Beware of false prophets,” our Lord warned, “which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matt. 7:15). Then He added the word by which they may be tested, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”

I discovered this classic book by A.W. Tozer shortly after my ordeal ended. With the encounter still so fresh in my mind, I comprehended Tozer’s words with full discernment and a new understanding.

In light of my story, you need to know that I did not have a computer until the end of 2011. As far as Christian programming, I was at the mercy of cable TV with TBN, Daystar, and a few other channels. Whenever I discerned a red flag in one of the programs, I’d just switch the channel to another pastor with another sermon. That was all just part of watching Christian TV. I didn’t know the term Word of Faith, much less the New Apostolic Reformation. I only knew that I loved the Lord and craved all of Him that I could get. What I did not realize was that I was the perfect candidate to fall into deception… I matched Tozer’s qualifications perfectly, in that I fervently craved more of God and would not settle for lukewarm Christianity! I wanted everything that I could get!

In 2008 I was introduced to GOD TV (a New Apostolic Reformation channel) and I quickly became addicted to it. The programming, the worship music, and the pastors were completely different from the others that I had become accustomed to. They were fascinating and spiritually enticing! Even the channel’s music leading up to their commercial breaks was intriguing… Quite frankly, I couldn’t get enough of it. Their worship music seduced the viewers into a deep spiritual experience with captivating repetitions. The pastors spoke of deep, prophetic things that they had heard from God. It wasn’t long before I had completely abandoned the other channels for GOD TV. I was totally blind to its influence.

The red flags were there from the start… I noticed that spiritual experiences seemed to dominate most of the sermons while repentance and the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus were not being mentioned at all. There were stories of angelic encounters, oil dripping from the speaker’s feet, feathers and gold dust falling on the worshipers, rain falling inside of the buildings, and supernatural gems being found all over the church. Due to my strong Christian upbringing, I knew that those things were not coming from God, but I was so intrigued with it all that I kept watching it. It was exciting compared to the money-grabbers and fake healers that were on the other Christian channels.

One night on my way home from work, I heard a sermon on the radio that spoke of *****. (I don’t remember what it was about.) However, when I got home and turned on the TV, the first thing out of the pastor’s mouth was, “if you just heard *****, you are a part of us!” Hey, how could I resist a confirmation like that? It made me feel so accepted!

Let me pause here to say that, by allowing this programming to continue, I gave satanic deception an open door. When I initially noticed the red flags, I should have rejected this false doctrine. However, I chose to ignore the warnings, so…

Another night after work, I turned on the TV to find a woman introducing a special training program that was available through her ministry. As she spoke, I watched the television disappear from around her, leaving only her face in the room. She continued to explain how we could order this program. I was not afraid of her. Having surrounded myself with deception for months, I thought, “Surely this must be from God”. I ordered the series. A few days later it arrived in the mail and I began to listen to the CDs. When I got to the middle of the series and realized what it was all about, I was literally shocked. It was demonic. It was angel worship. It was astral projection in the name of praying for others. Yep, we could go to them! We could also hover over other countries as we prayed for them. We could leave our bodies and enter into the “third heaven“. (The link is this actual teaching.) It was purely satanic.

Instead of throwing the garbage away, I decided to listen to the CDs again. Then I listened to them again; then over and over… I had become intrigued by them. A few weeks later, having gone through the lesson several times, I tried to do what they suggested, by inviting an angel to appear in the room, even though I knew that the Bible warned against it. I listened to the music that they had provided as I tried to experience “going to heaven” with them. I also imagined my spirit going into another person’s house to pray for them.

Shortly thereafter, I began to experience many vivid dreams and daytime flash-visions. I saw angels. I heard voices. Even though I knew better, I tried to convince myself that these were Godly manifestations that I had somehow missed in my earlier Christian walk.

On the physical side, flocks of vultures began to hover over my house. If I stood outside, they would circle over me and cast their shadow on me, one by one. One day, when returning from town, while I was still about 1/2 of a mile away from my house, I saw a flock of about 100 of these birds hovering directly over my house. Another time, I heard a crash outside of my back window as an entire flock crashed a tree limb in my back yard. I later learned that birds often represent demonic spirits.

One day, as I was about to enter my front door, I felt a swat on my back side as if a parent had just swatted a child. This frightened me terribly as I realized that I had just entered a realm that I didn’t want to be in. Demonic spirits had actually been allowed to touch me. At that point, I knew that it was only going to get worse, so that very day, I threw away all of the materials that I had received from that ministry. I also cleaned house and threw away most of my contemporary Christian music CDs.

At that point, I knew that the games I had been playing with God were over and that I was being forced to make a decision as to whom I was going to follow. In doing so, I desperately called on the Jesus that I had known as a child. Even so, it took months… and I mean months… to get back into a right relationship with the Lord. It still frightens me when I think about how I allowed this deception into my life. After all, I had been grounded in biblical truth since childhood.

Let me backtrack a little to add that when I threw the CD lessons in the trash, it sparked an attack of satanic rage that lasted for the next several months. I started seeing demonic faces in clouds, in trees, in bushes, in reflections, and in almost everything else…. all day long, day after day. These were harassing spirits. They were relentless and tormenting, and they robbed my mind of all peace. I learned to keep music on all the time to block out the mental noise, especially when I attempted to fall asleep. I was worn down to my wit’s end, both mentally and physically.

The torment eventually began to subside through the process of fully submitting myself to Jesus again. I could do nothing else but to throw myself into the verse, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”(James 4:7) In my efforts to make that happen, I made a conscious decision to resist the devil by literally ignoring the harassment. During that time, I stopped looking up at the sky and simply would not acknowledge the images. I turned away whenever I noticed one of them. At the same time, I acknowledged that I had brought this upon myself by allowing the witchcraft to remain in my house. I read the Bible and filled my mind with the Word every chance I got. I prayed constantly. Then, finally… one day it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen them for a while. It had taken months, but they were gone… Completely gone!

Today, I’m aware of many forms of deception that I knew nothing about a few years ago. I recognize the Emergent, the NAR, the Seeker-Friendly, the Word of Faith, the Purpose Driven, and on and on. Jesus wasn’t kidding… We must “test the spirits”. Deception is everywhere these days! …and what did He tell us in Matthew 24 concerning our day? BE NOT DECEIVED!!!

I will also say that I cannot prove that all of the NAR teachers allow training to this extent in their churches. Even so, it speaks volumes that GOD TV airs both NAR and witchcraft, and I have yet to hear the pastors on that channel argue against it. Obviously, when signs, wonders, and experienced-based doctrines are preached in place of biblical doctrine, other forms of deception are tolerated as well.

I realize that I’ve opened myself to ridicule by telling my story, but I also know that we are living in the end-times, and that many other Christians have been tempted to fall for this same deception. Hopefully, my story will spare someone else from having to go through this same thing. You need to know that God WILL let you be intrigued to death… even to eternal death. It’s up to you to keep yourself from being deceived.

“I dedicate this book to my children’s children’s children’s children. Though we will not meet until we get to heaven, I wanted you to know that I had you in mind as I wrote every word of this book, and I continue to hold you in my heart. You will become the answer to my prayers and the fulfillment of my prophecies. By the time you read this book, I will be watching you from heaven (see Hebrews 12: 1).”[1]

This quotation above is the opening dedication to Kris Vallotton’s upgraded book called Heavy Rain. Its former title was How Heaven Invades Earth. At the outset it sounds like a way to soften, or even spiritualize, the more militant sounding “invade” language in his book from six years ago. I believe this change is part of a new effort to say the same thing in a more sophisticated, and yet more palatable, way in order to attract a wider audience.

In this day and age where everything is seen from a marketing standpoint, as far as publishers and agents and business in general, it is no surprise that this would happen from within the headquarters of a now worldwide movement—Bethel Church in Redding, California.

I am writing this from Redding as it is the closest city to where we live for groceries and doctors. It is also where I lived for several years. It’s a pretty typical town in most aspects, with a Costco and an old converted theater downtown, and a mix of working people and retired folks looking for the sun…. It is even sunnier in Redding than Phoenix!

But Redding is actually quite special in regard to what is happening in Christendom. A phenomenon has grown up here. There is something almost “magical” about the effect that Bethel has had on this community. The city has fallen in love with this “church”. Is this even possible in our day of hysteria over “separation of church and state”? It is not separate in Redding. Bethel bailed out the Civic Auditorium and is running it well from all indications. Bethel is also becoming a major property owner. They have bought and improved several commercial properties and hope to increase their School of Supernatural Ministry to 3000 students in the next few years. (It is currently around 1400.) They want to build a museum of revival in Americana and have spent around $40,000 to purchase one man’s memorabilia collection of articles from major “moves of God” going back into the 1950s.

Bethel is growing while the city of Redding has endured a decline in many facets. Crime is up. The housing market is flat at best. Homelessness is rampant. But Bethel is doing really well. I believe they know why. I think they have discovered a secret to moving forward at this time in their history. Before I get back to this subject let met tell you why I am writing this report.

Why I Write
Before becoming a full time pastor in 2011 I spent over 30 years being a regular Christian, with a regular secular job, raising a family with my wife of 37 years. Before we moved to Redding we attended a church for 10 years beginning in 1994 in Yuba City, California. We noticed after almost 7 years in that church that the teaching was changing. We heard things that shocked us, but because of intense loyalty to the leadership we tried to justify things we should have checked out immediately. We were told that spiritual warfare was calling out demons by name and defeating them in the atmosphere, and thus allowing our city to have a mass revival. We were told it was always God’s will for us to be physically well. We were told our children were a chosen seed to bring in the great harvest of all time—that they would do miracles greater than Jesus or the Apostles. These things came in slowly, like a steady drip. We were told that Christians have demons that need to be cast out. We were to go on “prayer walks” that would run the devil out of neighborhoods and out of families as we took dominion over our city.

The problem is it didn’t work, and we could not find a good Biblical reason to swallow all of this new teaching. Young people would go to the church’s new “discipleship” school and come out on the other end bewildered by a lack of power, not blaming the leaders who taught them but God, who they thought did not keep up His end of the bargain. We looked at our Bibles and saw texts that were clearly meant for the next world being brought into ours, with no concept for context or proper Biblical interpretation.

It took us almost 3 years to realize we needed to get back to the Bible. Then we found the Discernment Ministries’ Herescope blog (www.herescope.net). God led us to this small cadre of folks who had been writing for years about different new teachings, that were really old things wrapped up in new and upgraded lingo. As Solomon says, there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl. 1:9).

Then, because of a job, and a ministry opportunity to take what we were finding about Satan’s schemes and warn younger believers, we moved to Redding to start a new job and work with a couple we thought truly were wanting to warn others. Sadly, within a year we found out we were not on the same page with the very people we were supposed to serve with. Shortly after this we began to attend a church where the Bible was taught verse by verse. God put us away in His waiting room where we could get our thoughts and hearts in line with His precious Word.

We began to serve the Lord in humble but useful ways. We helped clean the church each week, emptying waste cans and vacuuming the carpet. Later we taught Sunday School. We truly had many glorious times with our 4th grade class teaching through the entire Bible line upon line. Eventually I was asked to teach in place of the pastor when he was out of town. We were asked to shepherd a part of the congregation and had a “home group” of over 40 people in our home each month. What I found in those days was that God is gracious. When we seek Him and His ways for His glory, He provides all we need. His Word has the answers we need to communicate. We don’t need to make up anything fancy to attract attention to it.

I had heard the Lord calling me to ministry when I was 12 years old. I had, because of fear, chosen not to follow His call for many years. Finally at 50 years of age I answered that call. I began to seek the Lord, and asked others to pray with me about going into full time work. I assumed it would be in a ministry to young people, as that was the reason I moved to Redding. I wanted to warn them of what the enemy was trying to do, both within the church and without it. After another year of waiting, just when I began to give up, an opportunity came as the Lord opened up a door for ministry. I have been serving as pastor at a small community church in Lewiston, California, ever since. I live within 35 miles of Redding in the mountains. God is gracious indeed. It is the hardest, and yet most fulfilling job, I have ever had.

But Bethel is still a thorn. I suppose it reminds me of what happened to us in Yuba City. But it is far worse. It is a leader, a worldwide and dominant leader, in a movement rife with error. This is grievous to me personally because it goes after, and actually targets, young people in a huge way. This is why I write. These young people (and old people, too) are precious to our Savior. This movement is swallowing them in ways I never could have imagined even 6 years ago when I lived within a mile of Bethel Church. This church is more sophisticated and more “excellent” in an alarming way.

I admire those who are willing to share what they have gone through and how they have come out of deception. Please read……

Escaping the Fire

I’m Kati and I have a LONG story, but I will try to shorten it as best as I can. About 10 years ago my husband and I started attending church when we were stationed in WA state. Shortly after we got orders to San Diego, CA. Through a VBS program we started attending a local AG church. It was here where we were first exposed to Bethel Redding and the teachings of Bill Johnson. Our oldest daughter was 12 years old at the time and went with the youth group to a Jesus Culture conference in Redding. The church had MANY guest speakers and even established their own school of supernatural ministry. One guest in particular named Rob Deluca really sticks out to me because my husband pointed out that he almost NEVER quoted scripture….all he spoke of was his prophetic dreams and visions, and of course THE FIRE.

When we were able to get into military housing we started attending another AG church that was closer to us. Looking back on the surface they seemed to fall into the “emergent” category, but many of the same types of teaching were at the core. They would host special Holy Spirit seminars for people to seek the second baptism, etc. In addition there were a few small groups where the main focus was learning to tune to just the right frequency to hear from God.

From San Diego we went to Virginia. In the beginning we chose to attend the mega Baptist church that everyone recommended. Definitely a little on the emergent side now that I look back, but the teaching was solid and sound. Of course after experiencing all that I had before I thought something was wrong because to my polluted mind it appeared as if the Holy Spirit wasn’t moving. From there we left to attend a Church of God. The people at this church became like our family, but definitely a little suspect now that I look back. Lots of emotional music sang from the Brownsville Revival, some twisting of scripture and prayer meetings where the “gifts” would be used, etc. I decided to do a Daniel Fast one January and basically focused ALL of my attention when my kids were in school on “hearing” from God. I would watch nothing except for Sid Roth and then would look up information about his guests and then start to follow their teachings. I created playlists on my Spotify account with musical guests that he had on his show and would listen exclusively to that music as well.

We moved back to WA state last summer and made it a priority to find a church where they “operated in the gifts”. We started attending a small church because our daughter who by this time was 18 really connected with some of the youth. It was here that we were given a copy of The Holy Ghost movie. I had seen Father of Lights before but was especially intrigued by this movie. Even more so when I heard a testimony of a lady speaking of the weekly trips that she and another church member would make to a local nursing home to basically practice many of the same types of practices that Todd White demonstrates in the film. I was thinking that all of this was SO wonderful and I couldn’t wait to sign up and volunteer also. Thankfully it never worked out!

In January I did another Daniel Fast and saw on FB that a House of Prayer group similar to IHOP was forming locally. I was SO excited and committed to attend the launch which spanned over three days. The guest speakers were the ones who formed the Salem House of Prayer in Oregon and there was also a man affiliated with Latter Glory in Moses Lake. They made a big show of having each one of us come up front to receive a special “anointing” where they would lay hands on us and loudly pray and prophesy over us.

It was here that I met a lady who invited me to attend a special women’s gathering that was in a secluded Christian retreat center deep in the Olympic Forrest. I told my best friend about it and she agreed to fly out to attend with me. There was a woman leading who I’m sure now that they believe has “apostolic” authority. We all ate dinner together and then gathered together in a dark room with emotional workshop music being played before the leader started praying and prophesying over each woman in the room. There was lots of falling down, crying, laughing, flagging, and shofar blowing. The next day was the same only with an emphasis on the praying for our country. The leader had us stand all together holding the American flag signing, shouting, and shaking it declaring and decreeing all sorts of things. On the last day that we were there we were gathered together once more to say a quick prayer that turned into three hours of more pandemonium, of course I didn’t think this at the time! Many of these ladies I have learned take trips to remote areas in our state to blow shofars in order to cast out territorial demons. They clearly subscribe to Dominion Theology.

I started watching the FALSE Fire and Glory Outpouring that is currently happening in San Diego and watched a pastor get prayed over who is a leader at the Seattle Revival Center…..so then I felt God was telling me to go there. I loaded my daughter up in the car and booked a hotel so that I didn’t have to drive home. Crazy, emotional music with eerie shouts and laughter followed by Charlie Shamp bringing everyone up to the front to pray and prophesy. There was one point where he told us that God was giving out gold teeth and asked us all to take out our cell phones and check 7 mouths. There was one lady who supposedly got a gold tooth. She was ushered to the front and fawned over, but I remember thinking that is seemed funny that she just casually sat back down in her seat to check Facebook. Wouldn’t you have been on your face if that was the case? Those were the questions that started to rattle around in my head….but nevertheless, I believed that I was more “anointed” because I had been in the “glory.” Joshua Mill’s grandmother was also there that night and they did a reverse fire tunnel which allowed her to lay hands on everyone. I felt a magnetic force when she came by me and laid hands on me and fell down and was unable to move. The same thing happened to my daughter who then thought it was funny to start following her around in hopes of getting “touched” again.

My husband had to work in San Diego so we traveled together with him and were excited to go to the Fire and Glory Outpouring and experience the source of this “#westcoastrumble”. MORE of the same craziness that when I look back was simply demonic. One night while attending I had a headache and pulled out a roller with some essential oil to roll on my head. Within a minute the speaker, who was Miranda Nelson stopped and asked us if we smelled that “heavenly fragrance.” The whole crowd of course then got whipped up into a frenzy. My daughter wanted to raise her hand and say something, but I smacked her in the leg to get her to stop. I look back and know that between that and the lady with the gold tooth, God was trying to give me some clues, but I wasn’t ready to listen.

After returning home, I wasn’t able to attend church one Sunday and our daughter came home three hours past when she was supposed to arrive with mascara running down her face from her tears. She was telling me how “wonderful” church was because there was preaching all about stepping into the river…and of course, they did an alter call and craziness broke out. There was one lady close to my mom’s age who would always laugh hysterically. One day during church she simply placed her hand on my daughter’s leg causing my daughter to loose complete control of herself laughing in a way we had never heard before. It was then that she began to fail her college classes and and backslid majorly.

I used to sit for hours in my room practicing “automatic writing” and would beat myself up if I didn’t receive a “word” from the Lord. All the time I realize now that he was saying, “READ YOUR BIBLE.” I started praying that God would show me if I was on the wrong path. To expose anything that was not of him….and one night while watching the Jeff Jansen ranting and raving in a lifestream broadcast of the Fire and Glory Outpouring, I started to see things differently. I actually found myself wondering if these people were on drugs! I went to bed and woke up the next morning ashamed of myself for being a “doubting Thomas” but the same thing happened again, and again. I started digging and researching and my eyes began to open wide as the truth became revealed to me. I think I now am up to 356 videos saved to a playlist on my youtube account and have grown a desire to understand scripture in it’s proper context.

Our daughter is doing much better and recently moved out. We are really struggling to find a solid church home here. I was helping recently with a VBS at a local church and sat down with one of their pastors. He asked me what I was looking for in a church and I told him that God has really been doing a work in me and that I have grown to really love expository preaching of the word, how I am no longer interested in what people “think” it means or seeking out allegorical meanings. I told him at this time my husband and I desire line by line, verse by verse teaching. This pastor then reached over, grabbed his bible and flopped it around told me, “If THIS is all you have, then you only have the tip of the iceberg. THIS is ONLY what is written down.” How scary is that? God loved us enough to give us an objective source and it’s our responsibility to be good Bereans and check EVERYTHING out for ourselves. I believe that people, although desperate for the Lord, have become lazy and as a result fall victim to these heretical teachings.

I know that I could have added much more to this and given many more details. Maybe someday I will! Even just sitting here and writing this all out is very helpful to me. The people caught up in the movement are delusional, and I was right there among them. What this has taught me is that God IS a good father and shepherd and he WILL come after and rescue his sheep that have strayed from the path of righteousness….but we have to allow him to by turning from these wicked ways and turning back to the truth that is found in his written word. I’m not sure why God allowed me to experience the things that I did, but I know that what the enemy intended to harm me has certainly been turned around for good! My heart grieves for not only those who are lost, but those who attend church week after week and sit under these false teachings. I question whether many of them have even heard the true gospel or whether many of them are even saved. I’ve been praying about what I am supposed to do with all of this, but I am trusting God in the process. Thank you for reading, and God bless!!!

****

Thanks to Kati for permission to share her story. It also can be found on another great blog that I recommend.

What Are Bill Johnson’s Heresies?

In the past few weeks, Bill Johnson has been the center of a lot of controversy. With Montanist apologists like Michael Brown defending his errors and whitewashing his heresies and others falling prey to his exploitation, the fact that he is a heretic at all is being questioned. Bill Johnson seriously needs to be tested against the Scripture.

Kenosis

The Kenosis heresy teaches that Jesus set aside His divinity while on Earth. According to this doctrine, Jesus was no longer divine from His birth to His ascension. Bill Johnson has promoted this heresy in Face to Face with God on page 108. He said,

“Jesus set aside His divinity, choosing instead to live as a man completely dependent on God.”

Truth is, if Jesus set aside His divinity and became a man, Jesus would have been nothing more than a man. This is not the only time that Johnson promoted Kenosis. In chapter 7 of When Heaven Meets Earth, Johnson claimed,

“[Jesus] laid His divinity aside as He sought to fulfill the assignment given to Him by the Father.”

To claim that Jesus put His divinity aside while on Earth brings another Gospel. If Jesus was not divine when He died on the Cross, then He would not have been a sufficient sacrifice. In that case His death would be in vain and so would our faith. Instead, Jesus is treated like God while He is on Earth. He received worship (John 20:28, Matthew 2:2, Matthew 14:33, Matthew 28:9), claimed to be God (John 5:18, John 8:24, John 8:58), and did things only God could do all while on Earth (Matthew 9:2, Mark 2:5, 1 Peter 2:22).

Osteenism

Johnson has also taught the false gospel of Osteenism, more commonly called the Prosperity Gospel. The Prosperity Gospel teaches that health, wealth, and prosperity are promises of salvation or obedience. In a 2013 article entitled Courage to Leave a Legacy, Johnson wrote,

“Our connection with God is obviously the source of all blessing, prosperity and goodness in our lives. We make our way prosperous through obedience because when we do what He asks us to do, we strengthen our connection with the source of life.”

I would remind Bill that the most obedient person of the Bible was a poor carpenter who was brutally crucified, and someone who was called the greatest person born of a normal birth (Matthew 11:11) was a nomad who lived in the desert, wore camel hair for clothing, ate locusts and honey, and had his head cut off for his obedience.

Throughout the Bible, we see James get beheaded, Stephen get stoned, and the number of people who have gotten sick appear to pile up: Timothy, Epaphroditus, Trophimus, and even possibly Paul himself. However, that does not stop Johnson from saying Jesus died for our physical healing. In an article entitled Is It Always God’s Will to Heal Someone?, Johnson claims,

“When He bore stripes in His body He made a payment for our miracle.”

Retanism

There is another false teaching out there pushed by people such as Kenneth Copeland and Joyce Meyer that teaches that Jesus was born again. I called this teaching “Retanism”, and if it was a civil crime to preach it then Bill Johnson would be found guilty. In one sermon (Which has been reviewed on Chris Rosebrough’s Fighting for the Faith), Johnson can be quoted as saying,

“So [Jesus] was born through Mary, the Virgin, and then he was born again in the resurrection.”

Jesus was not born again because He did not need to be Born Again. He did not have a sinful nature and He, though tempted, did not desire to rebel against God. He was not dead in trespasses and sins, so He did not need to be made alive. However, Bill Johnson says Jesus was born again in many places, including this video, where he asks,

By now it is unlikely that you have not heard of Jesus Calling. That book—a daily devotional by Sarah Young—has sold more than 15 million copies, along with several sequels, children’s storybooks, and mobile apps. Today the Christian world is thoroughly saturated with Young’s writing, as her little devotional has exploded into a phenomenal success.

However, I wouldn’t call it unprecedented success. Christian publishers excel at creating these types of fads. Like its predecessors The Prayer of Jabez and The Purpose-Driven Life, Jesus Calling has managed to find the sweet spot of mass appeal: man-centeredness.

In the case of Jesus Calling, the devotional entries are presented as the actual words of Christ, with Him speaking words of encouragement and hope directly to the reader. Here’s how Young explains it in her introduction:

I have written from the perspective of Jesus speaking, to help readers feel more personally connected with Him. So the first person singular (“I,” “Me,” “My,” “Mine”) always refers to Christ; “you” refers to you, the reader. [1]

Young pushes back against the notion that her book is inspired. But that distinction seems to be nothing more than a semantic façade. Here’s how she describes her writing process:

The following year, I began to wonder if I could change my prayer times from monologue to dialogue. I had been writing in prayer journals for many years, but this was one-way communication: I did all the talking. Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God might want to communicate to me on a given day. I decided to “listen” with pen in hand, writing down whatever I “heard” in my mind. [2]

Only Young understands the balance she’s attempting to strike between divine revelation and her own imagination. In that sense, her books have a lot in common with modern prophecy—we’re told to believe they are the words of God without assigning them the authority of the Word of God.

And whether it’s a daily reading from Jesus Calling, an outburst of tongues, or a personal revelation from the Lord, there is a consistent and troubling theme gaining influence in the church today: The Bible is not enough.

In an earlier, unrevised version of Jesus Calling, Young made that point abundantly clear.

I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more. Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day (emphasis added). [3]

This desire to hear personally from the Lord is nothing new to the church, but it may be enjoying unprecedented acceptance among God’s people. Lately I hear phrases like “the Lord told me,” “God revealed to me,” and “I heard God say” from a wide variety of Christian ministries—it’s no longer the exclusive territory of the charismatic church.

The truth is God has already said everything He intended to say to us—His Word makes that clear. “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The Bible we have is neither incomplete nor inadequate—we already have all the revelation we need from God. As our good friend Justin Peters says, “If you want to hear God speak, read the Bible. If you want to hear Him speak audibly, read it out loud.”

I’ll admit, I don’t fully understand this desire to receive personal messages from the Lord. I’m enough of a Bible student to know that if I did truly hear God’s audible voice, it would likely knock me off my feet, or worse (cf. Matthew 17:5-6; John 18:6).

Instead of chasing special revelation from the Lord, we need to recommit ourselves to the sufficiency and authority of what He has already said. Moreover, we need to consider the special care the Lord took in recording and preserving His Word. As the apostle Peter wrote, “No prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:20-21).

Regarding that passage, John MacArthur writes,

By contrast, true prophecy does not come to mind through psychic intuition or New Age mysticism, and it is not discerned by guesswork. . . . Those who equate their own personal impressions, imaginations, and intuition with divine revelation err greatly. [4]

The great danger of books like Jesus Calling is that they drive a wedge between God’s people and His Word, encouraging them to look beyond the scope of Scripture for additional words from the Lord. In simple terms, they devalue the Bible and elevate emotional experiences and imaginary voices to the level of divine authority. And when anything you hear or feel could be the Lord speaking, you leave yourself open to all sorts of heresy and satanic lies.

God’s people need to be warry of anyone who assumes to speak for Him. We need to defend the authority of His Word against all pretenders. And we need to help shepherd other believers away from the popular desire for special revelation and back to the all-sufficient Word of God.

The Vineyard, the Charismatic Church, and the Cults

Why I Write

Long before becoming a born-again Christian in the fall of 2000, I spent 7 years in a cult calling itself the Church of the Living Word, also known as ‘the Walk’, lead by John Robert Stevens. After the Walk, I went to the Vineyard and spent 9 years there from 1989 up until 1998. When I became a Christian in 2000 I was attending a local Charismatic church.

Soon after becoming a Christian I began to notice many similarities between what we had been taught in the Walk – an outright cult – and what was being taught in the Vineyard and Charismatic movements. As a result I started taking a closer look into the teachings of charismatic leadership. I also noticed that there was prevalent within Charismatic/Vineyard churches a ‘mindset’ which was very similar to the type of mindset I found within the cult. I will discuss this ‘cultic mindset’ in more detail later[1], but for now suffice it to say that I am not referring to specific doctrines, but in the way rank-and-file members relate to the leadership and accept their teachings with little, if any, serious critical evaluation. This cultic-mindset is rampant in the charismatic church today and has resulted in an appalling lack of discernment in that movement.

Charismatic and Vineyard churches are highly autonomous, so I want to be careful not to paint them all with the same broad brush. It is not my purpose to label them all as cults and many of these churches are attended by sincere Christians. However, Charismatic and Vineyard churches as a group embrace the same basic ideas about how the Holy Spirit is working in the church today, and have endorsed the new ‘third wave’ generation of charismatic apostles and prophets as bona-fide spiritual leaders.[2]

Yet many of the sincere Christians who attend these churches have not made a complete or careful examination of the teachings of these apostles and prophets, nor carefully searched the Scriptures to see if they are true. Many of the major beliefs and premises of these prophets and apostles are very similar to (and in some points identical) the heretical teachings taught by the Walk. Furthermore, within the charismatic movement there are pronounced tendencies that are highly cult-like in the way members relate to spiritual leadership and respond to teaching.

What I hope to accomplish in this article is to address the similarity of teaching and mindset between the cult and Charismatic/Vineyard groups. The similarities are not minor, nor are they confined to peripheral issues. It involves almost all of the core doctrines and major beliefs of the charismatic movement.

The Walk

For 7 years during the 1970’s and early 80’s I was a member of a cult calling itself “The Church of the Living Word”, also known as “The Walk”. It was founded by a man named John Robert Stevens who, it was believed, was the ‘Apostle’ raised up by God to lead the Christian church into the “fullness of the Kingdom of God” on the earth. He taught a blending of Latter Rain[3] doctrine and occult, with enough of a Christian veneer to fool sincere believers who had a hunger for something more than what their traditional church had to offer.

I was immediately attracted by the sense of ‘spiritual’ energy and divine mission they seemed to possess. They had apostles and prophets, just like in the Bible, and they told us that God was doing a new thing and we were “it”. I spent most of my Walk years from 1977 to 1984 as a member of local cell churches in Ontario and Alberta, with frequent trips to larger Walk centers around the US.

The founder of the Walk, John Robert Stevens (JRS), claimed to be the Apostle to the Kingdom. He believed he was receiving the new revelation from God necessary to lead the church into the New ThingGod was bringing, which was the fullness of the Kingdom of God in the Earth before Christ’s return. The Walk was one of the more radical tributaries that flowed out of the Latter Rain revival of the late 40’s and 50’s. Walk doctrine incorporated the worst of the many heresies that came out of the Latter Rain movement, with some of Steven’s own ideas thrown into the mix.

Stevens had been hugely influenced by William Branham[4] during the Latter Rain movement. Branham believed that he was the angel of the seventh church mentioned in the Book of Revelation. He also believed, among other things, that the Word of God was expressed to us not just in the Bible, but in the Zodiac and Egyptian Pyramids, and his teaching was a blending of the occult, spiritism, and the Bible. Stevens picked up many of his ideas from Branham and other Latter Rain teachers and started his own church in 1950, located in the Los Angeles area.

I knew nothing of Walk history at the time, but when I joined in 1977 it had grown to a large network of about 100 churches spread across North America, with a few small groups in Europe and South Africa.

I soon found out that being in the Walk was going to be a whole lot more fun than traditional church life. Walk people took the doctrine of “salvation by faith alone” into interesting new levels. It didn’t matter a whole lot how you lived as long as “your heart was right” and you believed the right things. I didn’t smoke, drink, or visit bars when I joined the Walk, but that all changed. Many Walk members would often frequent bars and strip clubs, drink excessively and generally whoop it up, and I was soon going along with them. This was considered to be a healthy development for me since I was coming from a “religious” background.

In the Walk, one of the biggest hindrances to true spirituality was to have what we termed a “religious spirit”. Being religious was ‘old order’ and would hinder the ability to receive the new revelation coming from JRS. It was believed that one of the best ways to break a religious spirit was to let it all hang out and indulge your fleshly cravings. Indulging and expressing “the flesh” was considered more honest and “being real”, and therefore closer to God than phony, restrictive, “religious” behavior.

So in the topsy-turvy world of the Walk, carnality and sinful indulgence was an accepted route to spirituality. Many of those regarded to be the most spiritually mature were also often the wildest drinkers and party goers. But it was generally agreed that this was perfectly fine, because they were considered spiritually strong enough to handle it.

The Walk was very insular and elitist in the extreme. As far as we were concerned, the Walk was it. We were the embodiment of what God was doing in the earth today, moving towards becoming the manifestation of Christ in the earth with all His power and glory, which would enable us to usher in the new era of Christ’s Kingdom. Anyone who was in tune with God would see this and join our movement. Those who did not see things our way just didn’t have the revelation.

Steven’s would have nothing to do with other denominations and we did not associate at all with other Christian groups. In our view, there was little to be gained by associating with other Christian groups anyway, since we were the ones who had “the revelation”, and if there was more to be given, God would give it to us. We were on God’s cutting edge, leading the way for the “new thing” God was doing in our generation. This elitism, the sense of being on God’s cutting edge, was what attracted most of us to the Walk. We loved the sense of being a part of God’s inner circle.

Violent Intercession and Prophecy Junkies

Our services typically compromised of sitting around in a group listening to the latest tape from Anaheim. We all became prophecy junkies and lived from week to week in eager anticipation of the latest “word.” There was little teaching from the Bible. The pastor/leader was the guy who switched on the tape machine or regurgitated the latest apostolic revelation. After listening to the latest “word” from the Apostle, we would begin to engage the enemy in spiritual warfare through a form of prayer known as “violent intercession”.

Spiritual “violence” was one of the very basic premises behind the Walk, taken from the King James translation of Matthew 11:12. This teaching, generally referred to as “Taking the Kingdom by Violence”, was the concept that the Kingdom would only belong to those who wanted it badly enough to attain a sufficient level of spiritual intensity[5]. (Violence did not mean physical force, but a spiritual intensity.) Only those intense enough would “break through” in the spiritual realm and release the spiritual power necessary to make the word a reality. Intensity of prayer, or “violent intercession”, is what made it happen. This violent intercession was a big part of Walk church meetings. We believed that intensity and forcefulness behind our prayers was required to be effective, so we all worked very hard at building up our intensity by shouting, stomping our feet, and punctuating our demands with slashing hand action (like a sword).

We would typically begin to “intercede” by standing around in a circle after listening to the latest tape. Intercession would often begin by rebuking complacency in God’s people and appropriating the promises with shouts of faith. We would rebuke the Devil and the host of evil beings arrayed against us in the heavenlies.

‘Violent’ intercession comprised of shouting favorite “catch phrases” at God or the Devil. Some typical catch phrases often shouted repeatedly during intercession were:

“We loose the word tonight, Lord!” (With foot stomping.)

“We rebuke all passivity tonight!” (Rapid hand motions slice the air in emphasis.)

“We cast down the enemy and all his lies.”

“We speak the Apostles release today, Lord!”

“We won’t rest until we have the fullness of your Kingdom Lord.”

The intensity of our prayers and faith would “loose the word”. “Loosing the word” was setting its creative power free, and was another major premise of the Walk.

Great emphasis was placed in becoming the “word” through the intensity of our intercession. Attaining greater levels of spirituality depended upon our intensity. We believed we could speak the ‘word’ into existence, and appropriate the reality through prayer and positive confession. “Speaking” a word, such as ‘peace’ or ‘faith’, would impart it. Prayer commonly involved making ‘prophetic declarations’. As we prayed, we would lean forward, rapidly rocking back and forth and stomping the ground with our feet. Prophetic declarations were punctuated with rapid hand action, chopping and slicing through the air. We seldom ever sat or kneeled in prayer, as that made it more difficult to be intense.

The focus of our prayers would be to appropriate for ourselves the latest “truth” revealed by the Apostle and to speak it into being. We would also pray for the Apostle Stevens to have the “Kingdom breakthrough” we were all believing for. It was believed that once we pushed him through to the Kingdom through our intense intercession, he would be able to bring the rest of us into the Kingdom.

The Walk was very militant in tone. The songs, prayers and teachings all had a military air. A lot of Walk teaching revolved around the whole concept of a spiritual army ‘taking the Kingdom by force’, which resulted in prayers that were not about submission to God or seeking His will, but in casting down demonic powers and strongholds in high places. We were very demanding and insistent of our rights as sons of God. Praying in the Walk had little to do with humbly seeking God for His will and submitting to it as most Christians properly understand prayer. No, not us – we demanded the promises! Of course, we believed that it was all according to God’s will as revealed by the Apostle. We were intense prophets, God’s spiritual warriors excitedly taking the Kingdom by storm, not humble servants!

Getting the Revelation

In the Walk, we often talked of “getting the revelation” or “revelation knowledge”. This was a mystical insight that gave us access to spiritual truths, as opposed to informing the intellect through the study of God’s Word. ‘Getting the revelation’ was knowledge of the truth gained through a mystical experience or insight. This method of gaining the truth was considered much more spiritual, and therefore far superior, to mere Bible study. The knowledge of truth was received by direct spiritual insight or impartation, of which the apostle Stevens was the channel. We were expected to accept what Stevens said as direct from God, without criticism. Our own spiritual capacity to receive the truth would confirm it. No need to carefully check the Bible.

There was often much talk and teaching about the necessity of bypassing the mind in order to ‘receive’ the truth. Those who were properly open to God would receive the divine illumination to know the truth of what the Apostle said. We were to have a mystical inner sense that told us what was true. Those who didn’t believe just didn’t have the necessary spiritual ability to receive, and therefore couldn’t “know”.

Possessing the inner mystical ability to “get the revelation” permeated the Walk and it’s teaching, and believing that you had it was essential to joining the Walk. This is a hyper-spiritual way of thinking that becomes very self-authenticating[6]. It provides an almost impermeable defense from any form of criticism, because anyone who questioned us or our teaching just didn’t have the ‘revelation’ and thus could be safely ignored. They were obviously low-wattage Christians, below us on the spiritual scale of things, and we were above quibbling with them. No rational argument from scripture impacted us, because we had moved beyond scripture and entered into the realm of direct knowledge from God. The only scriptures we were interested in were those that seemed to support our beliefs. No one in the Walk ever questioned what Steven’s said, and anyone who did soon left. They were known as “blow-outs” that couldn’t handle the revelation.

Revelation knowledge was in fact what the Walk was all about. God was doing a new thing in the earth, preparing an army that would “break through” into the Kingdom and usher in the reign of Christ in the earth. The Apostle Stevens was the anointed man of God to lead the charge. New revelation was needed for the “new thing”, so God was also raising up prophets and apostles along with Stevens to speak the new, living word of God. A few isolated scripture verses were heavily spiritualized to support this.

Little Christ’s in the Earth

Stevens taught that the Bible text was a dead letter, and it was only alive as it lived in us and the Apostles. The “word made manifest” was common Walk talk. The “Living Word” was revelation knowledge spoken through the Apostle. The word of God was “Living” because living vessels spoke it and it wasn’t just “dead” text in a book. We believed that we could “become the word” as the word became manifest in us. By this, Stevens literally meant that we could become “the Word made flesh” just as Christ was, and become “little Christ’s” in the earth today.

The spoken word was, in practice if not in doctrine, placed on a par with scripture. In fact, most of us in the Walk ignored our Bibles. I seldom ever opened its pages. Why would I? We were getting God’s latest, hottest word straight off the press.

According to Stevens, he never knew when he might receive a sudden, divine impartation of new wisdom. He was receiving such a steady flow of new revelation from the Lord that he often had a small entourage of assistants following him around with tape recorders so that none of his prophetic utterances would be missed.

Stevens often talked about the Devil. He seemed to talk about what the devil was doing as much as what God was doing. Apparently Stevens was so vital to God’s endtime plan, and moving in such a high level of prophetic impartation, that the devil was always after him and giving Stevens a hard time. Stevens always gave the impression that he was in constant life and death spiritual battles with the enemy,[7]and we were always encouraged to pray for him. In fact, praying for him and listening to his tapes was the main focus of our meetings and of the Walk in general.

We often made pilgrimages to the bigger Walk churches in Sepulveda and South Gate, and several other cities around the U.S. The Walk had a large complex in Iowa, just outside of Washington, called Shiloh. This was our major conference center and school of the prophets. It was a huge wooden structure surrounded by corn fields. I spent a couple of summers there, attending conferences and picking corn. Shiloh soon earned a bad reputation with the locals due to the drinking habits of our church members, who liked to patronize the local bars and drink excessively. Many of the local establishments became “off limits” to Walk members because of our drunken behavior.

However, drinking was very popular in the Walk and seen by many as an effective antidote to a ‘religious spirit’. We were always on the guard against religious spirits cropping up in ourselves and others. Religiosity was considered at least as bad, or even worse than, sin. It was often taught that it was better to just sin and be honest, rather than run the risk of being religious.

Once a man joined our group who used to attend a local Pentecostal church. It was the general consensus that this new member had a religious spirit. We were very worried for him, but much to our relief he soon discovered that he liked the taste of beer and took up drinking. We considered that this was a good thing as it was a sign that the religious spirit that had him in bondage was being broken.

Stevens died in the early 1980’s and his widow, Marilyn, took over leadership of the Walk. I left the Walk in 1984. The last time I had any direct contact with former friends in that group was years later, and they were still praying for Stevens to be raised from the dead.

It is not within the scope or purpose of this article to write a complete history of the Walk and it’s doctrines[8], but I wanted to give you a summary of it’s major teachings, characteristics and mindset, because the same beliefs that Stevens taught in the Walk are surfacing in the Vineyard/Charismatic prophetic movement today. I have included a summary of the major Walk doctrines in a subsequent chapter.

The Walk embodied a hyper-spiritual way of thinking that fosters spiritual pride, making the affected Christian susceptible to all kinds of unbiblical, elitist beliefs. The Walk conditioned it’s adherents to view all the rest of Christianity as a type of religious ‘Babylon’: in spiritual darkness, unable to receive the revelation we had, and therefore abandoned by God. The Walk was it. I remember well a comment Stevens made once that sums up this cultic conditioning very well. He said it in a very off-the-cuff manner, but it expressed the prevalent Walk attitude. “Once you’ve been in the Walk, it ruins you for anything else. You won’t ever be able to return to Babylon.” (Babylon being any church other than the Walk.)

Hyper-spiritual thinking turns a Christian into a spiritual surfer, always wanting to ride a new wave and looking to catch the next big move of God. Such Christians are seldom satisfied with the plain message of the Bible and reaching the lost so that others can be saved. They are more interested in discovering deeper truths or discussing some novel insight. One of the greatest dangers behind this type of thinking is to cause Christians to forget that our main job here on earth is to preach the gospel and teach the basic Word of God so that others can be brought into the faith of Christ. Instead, it sets Christians on a quest for ever higher spiritual experience, raising up great spiritual armies and engaging in high level cosmic warfare.

The Vineyard

I left the Walk and joined the Vineyard movement in the late 80’s. The Vineyard is a Charismatic church growth movement characterized by a casual, relaxed atmosphere and an upbeat, modern style of worship music. The Vineyard is at the forefront of a much larger Charismatic revival, lead by the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (TACF)[9], Peter Wagner, Rick Joyner and the new wave of prophets and apostles rising to prominence. The first thing I noticed about the Vineyard was its music and laid-back preaching style. The music was great and the worship went on for extended periods, the dress was casual and it had a coffee bar at the back. I was to remain in the Vineyard for the next 9 years.

I soon discovered there was a reason for the laid back preaching style in the Vineyard: The Vineyard was very laid-back about what it believed. In contrast to the Walk, the Vineyard was very wishy-washy about what it believed and adopted an easy-going approach to the truth. There was lots of warm and fuzzy preaching on God’s love, personal fulfillment, setting and reaching goals, and dreaming big dreams for life. I used to be in sales in the business world, and recognized most of it as repackaged business management-speak and sales motivational teaching that had more to do with Norman Vincent Peal than the Bible.

The Vineyard was very pragmatic in its approach to church growth. We were often developing new ways to reach the community through various out-reach programs, such as door-to-door food give-aways, free barbeques, or pop give-aways on street corners. These things are not wrong in themselves, of course, but for all our good works, there was little Gospel content in what we did. We put a lot of thought into how to reach the community, but little consideration into the content of the message we were reaching them with. Most of our growth came from attracting existing Christians to our church with our popular music and coffee-club atmosphere.

The Vineyard also took a pragmatic approach to truth: whatever worked was OK. What Bible teaching there was usually came in the form of “keys” or “steps” to reaching some personal or group goal, such as realizing your full potential. Lots of teaching centered on the mechanics of various “how-to” methodologies, such as ‘how-to journal’ as a method to hear God. How-to pray for the sick. How-to reach the community. How-to minister and receive inner-healing. How-to discover your spiritual ‘gift mix’. How-to interpret dreams, and so on.

Often, preaching was little more than subjective ramblings about what the speaker “felt” God was currently saying or doing. And always about how much God loved us and how some wonderful new thing was on the horizon. Always couched in very spiritual terms, but it was typically the leader’s opinions of what God was saying at the moment and seldom was there much, if any, Biblical exposition.

In one such very typical service, the entire teaching consisted of gleanings from a secular book on business success that had been written by a Mormon. In another very typical service I recall, the sermon consisted of jokes the Pastor read from a Christian joke book. The only occasions that I can recall in which the pastor actually expounded on the Bible at any length (apart from cherry-picking the occasional, isolated proof text), was when the church started running into the red, and a sermon on tithing was dusted off.

Night of the Living Dead

Even before the ‘Blessing’ hit the Toronto Airport Vineyard in 1994 we were seeing bizarre manifestations in the Vineyard. In the early 90’s, just before 1994 when the ‘laughing revival’ broke out, there was a Vineyard conference in Kitchener that I still think of as “the night of the living dead”. In this conference, when the altar call was given, a large crowd lurched to the front, probably half the auditorium, and started dancing, twisting, gyrating, and hopping at the front as a “blessing” was prayed over them. Vast numbers of people lurched, crawled, staggered and limped around like a mass of grotesque horror flick zombie’s. The room was filled with all manner of freakish, bizarre and even obscene behavior. One girl was on her back in front of the stage, making orgasmic, thrashing and gyrating motions that could only be described as sexual activity.

The Vineyard leaders accepted all this as the moving of the Spirit. The prevailing attitude of the leadership and members was that this was God moving. According to standard Vineyard thinking, the Holy Spirit can do a deep inner work without the mind being informed or knowing what is going on, or without any further knowledge of truth. It was generally acknowledged that some of the bizarre behavior may be demonic in origin, but most of it was the work of the Holy Spirit or the human response to the power of the Holy Spirit at work within. It was believed that the Spirit often worked best and deepest if it could bypass the intellect, and there was no need for the mind to be informed. So we weren’t too concerned because we believed that God was doing a deeper work in them and we simply prayed that God would bless them even more.

The “Blessing” Comes to Toronto

In the Vineyard, adhering to true doctrine was not as important as just being open to whatever the ‘spirit’ wanted to do. For any leader, it was more important to be lead by the spirit, and as long as a ministry seemed to move in that, and could get results (make “stuff” happen, which in our circles meant healings and manifestations) h/she was assumed to be a man or woman of God regardless of the content of their teaching. Whatever they said was accepted as a message from God.

As a result of this mindset, a speaker could say almost anything from a Vineyard pulpit as long as they came packaged with the right charismatic personality and spiritual gifts. In the Vineyard, one of the gravest sins that could be committed was to get too firm on beliefs, since that was considered unloving and divisive. Since questioning a teaching was perceived to be divisive and critical, we seldom ever seriously questioned what was taught or took seriously the Biblical warning to test all teachings and prophetic “words”.

Discernment devolved to the level of feelings, intuitive insight and subjective impressions in which no one could know anything for sure, but certain people (usually the ‘prophetic’ types in our midst) were generally trusted to have the right discernment on issues. This attitude fostered a lack of real discernment among Vineyard leaders which opened the doors wide to a large influx of false teachers and false prophets in the early Nineties. I believe it was this lack of discernment, largely due to Biblical illiteracy, that paved the way for the arrival of the Toronto “Blessing” in 1994.

Early in January of 1994, I heard that revival[10] had broken out in the Toronto Vineyard and we went up to check it out. Our Vineyard was within an hours drive. Many friends from our Vineyard church also went up that night. We entered the meeting room and I was stunned by the bizarre scene that opened up before us. It was pandemonium everywhere. The large room was crowded with people shaking, bobbing, running on the spot and flapping their arms.

I didn’t get the “Blessing” that night, but many of my friends did. I walked up to one friend, a worship leader from our church, who was running frantically on the spot and flapping his hands. I asked him what he thought was happening and how he felt. He had no explanation, only a smile, and he couldn’t stop the running or hand flapping.

I attended several Toronto meetings. Although the leaders would often say that the manifestations where not what it was all about, that’s what they mostly talked about and they held them up as the proof of God’s moving in our midst. It was obvious that the manifestations were the big drawing card. After an extended time of worship, there would be a testimony time in which the leader would interview people up front about what they felt God was doing within them.

Manifestations often started during worship, but became very pronounced during testimony time, and the leaders would go with “whatever God was doing in our midst” and allow almost anything to happen. Often there was no time left for preaching. But that was never an issue, because we were not going up to hear the Word. Soon, the thing was to double over making gasping or mooing noises. From that time on, there was a lot of “mmmooooooing”, “wwhhooooing” and “ooooooing” in Vineyard meetings.

One Vineyard service I remember at a church north of Toronto was very typical. It was more like a drunken party than a church service. The chairs had been cleared away so that the middle was open. The congregation stood around and danced to loud rock “worship” music. Many at the front were falling over each other. As they touched each other, they would get “blessed” and double over, collapsing in a heap, arm in arm. Communion was served as a women danced through the crowd with a tray serving glasses of grape juice to other dancers on the floor. We were there until after 10:30 at night, and still the worship and dancing continued and no one preached. I stood in the back, not dancing.

At this time, and for several years, I was decidedly pro-Toronto Blessing, as the renewal came to be known. I didn’t understand what was going on, but decided that if that’s how God wanted to move, then that was fine by me. Who was I to question God? It never occurred to me to open my Bible and test what was going on against the Word. The mystical education I received in the Walk set me up perfectly to accept the Toronto Blessing without question.

I had been taught in the Walk to accept that God could do things that did not line up with the written Word. Now, in the Vineyard we had Prophets who were getting a steady stream of messages from God who could interpret what was going on for us, even though we did not know what the Bible taught on such matters.

So I went with it, and criticized the critics for being closed to what the Spirit was doing. I considered that those “old order Pharisees” just couldn’t handle it when God wanted to do something fresh in another group like ours. They just didn’t understand what God was doing in our midst. If they’d just open up their hearts to the Spirit, then they would understand that this was really God. But they couldn’t do that because they were “religious” and narrow minded. This pretty much summed up my attitude and the prevalent attitude of the pro-Toronto crowd.[11]

In the Walk we were used to accusations from other church groups of being a cult, and we all learned how to deal with that without letting it get to us. Didn’t Ishmael always persecute the true Isaac? Didn’t the old order always misunderstand the new thing God does? Were not the true prophets persecuted? So when other Christian groups began to question the Toronto Blessing and raise many serious and legitimate theological concerns, I already had the necessary psychological defenses in place to dismiss them out of hand – without ever stopping to think for even a moment that they just may have a point!

The Charismatic Church

During the mid to late 90’s, I was involved in a new Vineyard church plant in our community. However, by 1998 the church plant fizzled and I began attending a local Charismatic church. But I still considered myself to be a part of the Vineyard and continued to move socially in Vineyard circles for a few more years.

The 2 years that followed were the worst of my life. Looking back on it now, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me, because the Lord used it to finally bring me to Himself in real surrender and conversion. Faithful are His afflictions.

“It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.”[12]

I was in the deep black pit of despair and saw no way out. A small software company I had started with a friend a few years earlier was in deep trouble. A large business deal I had made with a big distributor turned sour and threatened to bankrupt me, and I became embroiled in a lengthy and expensive lawsuit. My marriage was in trouble and was heading for the rocks. I struggled on until finally, in the summer of 2000 I hit bottom, financially, emotionally and spiritually. My business was a failure. I was out of work and saddled with a huge debt. The lawsuit continued to grind on with no end in sight. I owed more money than I ever hoped to pay off, and began to look into bankruptcy proceedings.

Late one night in September of 2000, I was laying awake in bed worrying about my debt, the lawsuit, my marriage and how everything in my life had gone terribly wrong. I didn’t know where to turn. I thought I was a good Christian and couldn’t understand why my life was falling apart.

As I laid there reviewing my life, I began to realize that even though I considered myself a good person and I believed in God in an intellectual way, Jesus was not the Lord of my life. I was still in control of my life and I was not living for Him. I had never given Him my life and entrusted myself completely to Him, and I was afraid of what He might do if I did. I had never given up my will and desires. I did not believe that His way really was better than mine. That night I saw my unbelief and lack of trust in Christ for the sin that it was.

Saved by Grace

At around 2 AM I got up and went downstairs to the living room so I wouldn’t wake my wife, and got on my knees and began to pray and call out to God. I began by confessing all my sins that I was aware of and repenting of them, asking Him to forgive me and help me to change. I confessed especially my sin of unbelief and rebellion by not trusting Him to direct my life. I repented of my fear of what He may do with my life, and I handed my life fully over to Him, asking Him to come and be the Lord of my life and take charge completely.

I don’t remember what words I used exactly, but this in a nutshell was how I prayed. The key was surrendering control of my life over to His Lordship. I confessed that I was still a sinner because I was in control and essentially doing things my way. I repented of this, and surrendered my will and ambitions over to Christ and committed myself to doing what He wanted, no matter what. I asked for His help to do this as I knew I couldn’t live the Christian life without His strength. I prayed like this for a long while, and then went back to bed.

I don’t recall feeling anything in particular while I was praying, but I soon noticed that a change took place inside me that surprised me. I became spiritually alive in a way that I had never experienced before. I had a new inner life and strength, freedom from many sins that had plagued me, and a real inner peace that I had never known. I also found a new power to resist and overcome sin. I was by no means perfect, but I had a new strength and power over sin which I previously didn’t have. Worldly interests faded and I lost interest in the usual entertainment with which I used to occupy my free time. It now seemed to me to be such a colossal waste of time, and even sinful. Instead, I much preferred to spend my free time in prayer, studying the Scriptures, or with my family and other good tasks which pleased the Lord. But probably the most significant change was a great inner peace which I had never before known. Christians through the ages have referred to this change as regeneration, conversion, the new birth, or being born-again.

One of the first things I noticed after my conversion was that I had a new love for His Word and a passion for the truth. I hadn’t read the Bible for years because I never got very much out of it, but immediately after my prayer of commitment to Christ, I found a new love and pleasure in the Word. His Book came to life for me in a way that I had never experienced before, and I began to spend hours reading it.

Also, I began to pray and soon made a habit of getting up early each morning so I could pray before going to work. One of the first things the Lord taught me after my conversion was the importance of spending time alone with Him everyday to maintain and grow in the life of His Spirit. This is how we grow deeper in Him so that we can continually receive His life and not dry up. It is the only way to grow in personal knowledge of Him.

One of the most delightful aspects of repentance and coming to faith in Christ is the spiritual reality that begins on a personal level with the Savior. Life changes from the inside, and it is truly a new life. One of the several changes that took place for me, and I believe for anyone truly regenerate, is a new love for God’s Word. I had a new hunger for the Word, and I could not get enough of God’s truth. I started to devour the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. And this is when my trouble with the charismatic church started.

Soon after my conversion I became appalled at the backslidden condition of the church and horrified over its spiritual squalor. For months I was in an agony over the state of the church. The preaching in the Charismatic church I was attending at the time of my conversion was mostly hype, froth and vacuous enthusiasm with little substance. It reminded me of the motivational seminars I used to attend while in business. Yet the people all thought it was wonderful and wanted more. It was a nightmare.

Neither did I understand why most of the people were spiritually dry or even depressed. There was a revolving door at the altar as the people continually went forward for a ‘fresh touch’ to pick them up out of their spiritual slump week after week. I soon realized that most of them knew little about daily quiet time alone with Christ and as a result did not have a very good connection Him. They were trying to get what life they could second hand from others. And I was appalled that the church leaders seemed blind to this situation, and were not teaching the people the crucial importance of getting alone with God every day to pray and read the Bible.

A generation ago, in born-again circles daily quiet time alone with God was considered basic to the Christian life, and neglecting time alone with Him was a sign of back-sliding. This is no longer the case. Today, the church in general is so backslidden and lukewarm, that those who are in the habit of turning of their TV sets and making real time for God each day look like flaming radicals. During a breakfast meeting one morning a few months after my conversion, I told the Pastor of our Charismatic church about my new found joys in quiet time and the new life in Christ I found in it. He only had this word of warning for me: “Don’t turn into a hermit”.

My outward circumstance didn’t change for a long time, and in some ways even got worse, but I felt a Peace that defied explanation. I knew that everything was in God’s hands and I wasn’t worried or anxious. I knew I was where He wanted me to be and that He would take care of me and see me through. However, it was still a long time before there were any visible changes in my external circumstances. The debts were still there and the legal battle continued. Then, about 8 months after my conversion, I lost my job and entered a period of very erratic employment. But I can honestly say that His peace carried me through it all, and I felt perfectly at rest in Him. I did not feel much anxiety over it. I knew He was in control and that if He was allowing these things, then He had a very good reason for it whether I understood or not. All along, God was more concerned with teaching me something rather than simply snapping His fingers to make everything better. Eventually He did rescue me, more wonderfully than I could have imagined, but only after I had learned the lessons He had for me.

A Few Questions about Toronto

Up until my conversion I was still very pro-Toronto Revival, even though I had some questions and had not done a thorough search of the scriptures. I was still of the opinion that we shouldn’t run the risk of going against God by asking questions. But it wasn’t long after my own renewal in Christ that I started to have some serious questions about the Toronto Blessing (TB). There were too many stark contrasts between what I was seeing in the Word and what these TB people were experiencing. I didn’t think that everyone had to experience God the same way I did, but there were too many differences that seemed to be of such a fundamental nature as revealed in the Word that I started to question whether it was really the same spirit at work.

One question I couldn’t wrap my head around was – why did Christians have to receive the Spirit from another person? Christians, supposedly already born-again and having the Spirit, were continually going to Toronto Blessing renewal conferences to receive a further blessing (‘fresh touch’) from the hands of someone who had “it”. Then, once someone had the TB, they could in turn pass it on to others.

This requirement seemed to me to be at odds with the Word and nature of the Holy Spirit, as well as my own experience.[13] Was not the way into the Holy of Holies made for all of us in Christ? To enter in, all we had to do was retire to our private prayer closet. Why did all these Christians need some “Holy Ghost Bartender” to dispense a blessing? Didn’t Jesus say that “Whoever believes in me, as the Scriptures have said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” (John 7:38) We shouldn’t need anyone to touch us in order to receive from God. All we have to do was get alone with Him.[14]

We shouldn’t need to work ourselves up, get hyped or pumped at a conference by great music in order to receive. According to the New Testament, we no longer need “anointed” worship leaders to usher in the presence of God. Didn’t the Bible say that we no longer had to go to a certain location to enter His presence and that He was with us in our prayer closet? Why then this mad stampede to Toronto to get “it”? These “Toronto” people talked as if they didn’t know how to meet God at all apart from getting zapped at a conference. Whatever it was, it seemed to require all kinds of just the right externals to make it happen: it required the right music, “anointed” worship leaders, charismatic speakers and receptive crowds in order for “it” to happen. It all made me wonder exactly what “it” was that they were getting.

Another thing that struck me as contrary to the Word was that the TB was being passed on to others indiscriminately. It was anyone’s for the asking, no strings attached. The TB leaders were praying for everyone who lined up along the tapped line to receive the Holy Spirit. The only requirement seemed to be the desire to have it. There was no call to holiness, confession of sin and repentance. Again, this seemed to contradict the Bible in many ways.[15]

TB people were often told not to pray, as it hindered their ability to receive the “blessing”. Instead, they were often counseled to remain silent and just be open to receive. [16] This made no sense to me at all. How could praying ever hinder the Holy Spirit?

Also, why the drunken behavior and loss of control that totally contradicted everything the Word had to say about the Spirit of God?[17] I had spent weeks in a very manifest, tangible sense of His presence after my conversion and I came away from the experience with a greater understanding and renewed love for the great truths of the Bible. Never once did I lose control or feel “drunk”. The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of clarity and sobriety, of truth and wisdom, Who comes to give us greater knowledge of Christ through an increased understanding of His Word. But these revival drunks were descending into a mindless stupor as they staggered around in a fog, falling over each other. The drunks gained no greater love for the Word as a result of their so-called meeting with God. All they wanted was “more, Lord, more”.

This was in total contrast to my own experience of God’s presence, which was marked by great clarity and left me with a greater love for the written Word and a new joy in reading it. I saw old, familiar Bible truths in a new, clear light that made them fresh and amazingly wonderful.

Déjà vu

I pondered these and many other questions for a long while. I had a lot of questions and few answers. So much of what I was seeing in Toronto Vineyard and Charismatic circles just didn’t line up with the Word or the nature of the Holy Spirit as revealed in the Word.

Although I had been in the Vineyard when John Wimber embraced Paul Cain and the Kansas City Prophets and introduced them into the church, I didn’t know much about them or what they taught. The Vineyard accepted them and I had many friends who held them in high regard, so I assumed they must be all right. But not long after I was converted, I decided it was time to check into the charismatic prophets and teachings for myself.

I decided to start with Rick Joyner’s teaching and messages, since many of my friends held him in high regard and he seemed to be one of the top “Prophets”. I started reading his stuff, with an open mind since I had no real opinions about him either way. In fact, if anything, I started with a bias in favour of Joyner because I had heard nothing but good about him in Vineyard circles and I had no reason as yet to think otherwise. Soon, my research over the weeks and months spread to the many ministries associated with him: Peter Wagner, Bob Jones, Paul Cain and the Kansas City prophets. For ease of use, I’ll refer to this group as the Third Wave.

As I looked into the teachings of the Charismatic leaders and prophets, I was startled to find out that they believed the same things we believed in the cult. Also, the overall tone and flavor of their prophesying and prophetic lingo was familiar. It sounded too much like the Walk, and I got a bad dose of déjà vu as I realized that the prophets and leaders of the Vineyard and Charismatic movements were teaching the same things we believed in the Walk.

I began making a list of the similarities between the Walk and the Third Wave, a list which eventually reached over 50 items. I later developed these points into a list of ‘Red Flag’ symptoms of deception.[18]There were far too many heretical teachings in common to be coincidental, so I started looking into historical roots. As a result of this research I learned that they shared the same Latter Rain roots.[19] The same Latter Rain doctrines and teachers which had influenced John Robert Stevens had also influenced Paul Cain, the Kansas City Prophets, and many others who influenced the Vineyard.[20] But this time it was not on the fringes of Christianity like the Walk, but leading the prophetic revival sweeping the Vineyard/Charismatic church.

Another question still nagged at me: Was the Laughing Revival a real move of the Holy Spirit or not? So one night in December of 2001 I sat down with my Bible and concordance. I decided the best place to start was with spiritual drunkenness, since this was one of the most prominent manifestations touted by revival leaders as a sign of the Holy Spirit. I read through all the scriptures that talked about drunkenness, cross referencing any related words that came up, such as “staggering”.

I was surprised at how much the Bible had to say on spiritual drunkenness[21], and just as shocked at how overwhelmingly negative it was. The Bible teaching on drunkenness, spiritual or otherwise, is notable in its overwhelming condemnation of it. In no place does the Bible ever suggest that “spiritual drunkenness” is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but quite to the contrary, is a sign of spiritual delusion and blindness. Drunken behavior is universally condemned as sinful[22], and therefore could not be the work of the Holy Spirit. There may be some gray areas in the Bible, but this is not one of them.

Learning to Be Berean

I remember the Vineyard revival leaders telling us not to be afraid of being deceived. In fact, we were often told that we should be more afraid of missing out on what God is doing than in being deceived. According to them, God wouldn’t let us be deceived. But now I understood why Jesus and Paul so often expressed concern that we be not deceived.[23] As I studied the Bible, I began to see in the Word how and why deception happens. In a nutshell, it is often due to Biblical illiteracy.

Many Christians are misled because they lack a ‘Berean’ like diligence to “examine the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”[24] The Bible calls them “more noble” for this diligent regard for the Word. Paul welcomed this Berean spirit. I wonder why the so-called apostles and prophets today don’t appreciate it. Today they call it ‘religious’, fault finding, critical, divisive, and warn such people that they risk being judged by God. Revival leaders seldom miss an opportunity to mock what they regard as a ‘religious spirit’, which in their view is anyone who is less than enthusiastic about their movement.

Judging teaching is not judging the person. We are not to judge the person, as far as judging their hearts, motives or sincerity. We cannot know those things, but it is a Biblical injunction to judge their teaching and reject those who bring false doctrine. We are to test all prophecies (I John 4:1, 1 Cor. 14:29), test the apostles (Rev. 2:2) and evaluate all teaching (2 John 9-11), to list but a few verses. We are to test all of them, and ignore the false ones all together.

Heresy Hunting

This article is not about heresy hunting. We have the God given duty and responsibility to challenge error and in love warn those caught up in it. God holds us responsible if we don’t.

There is no doubt that the Walk was a cult. Cult experts are agreed on that and the same cultic tendencies and ideas we had in the Walk are being embraced by Vineyard and Charismatic circles: end-time elitism, Apostolic restoration, mysticism, exaltation of the prophetic and revelatory word, mindless acquiescence to prophetic leadership and directives, marginalization of Scripture, to name but a few.

‘Bereans’ who check teachings against the Word are no longer called ‘noble’, but labeled Jezebels, fault finders, and accusers of the brethren. Christians are becoming Biblical illiterates and as a result easy prey for anything that comes along that looks spiritual. They have lost their love for the written Word and are out for an experience. This lack of discernment, especially among Vineyard leaders, is one of the single biggest reasons false prophets and teachers have gained such easy access into the church to spread their heresy. Lack of discernment in the church turns it into a buffet for demonic spirits to feast upon.

Many church goers today are religious consumers who sit passively through the preaching, accepting what is said with little critical thought – much like watching TV. Truth isn’t as important as great worship music and the right religious feeling. As a result, today a prophet or teacher can say almost anything and get away with it as long as they say it with a bright smile, sound ‘loving’, and appear to have the right kind of personality. Getting too sticky about the truth is considered divisive and unloving.

The Vineyard went along with what John Wimber said because it was he who said it and they had placed their confidence in him as a man of God. Few of us, including myself, ever checked our Bibles carefully beyond the proof text given. This is devotion to a person over the objective truth of the Bible, and is the essence of a cultic mindset.[25] We see this in churches whenever people passively accept what is being taught without checking the scriptures: the primary criteria being that the speaker displays all the charismatic trappings of someone moving in the Spirit. No one wants to believe that the smiling, loving, charismatic figure on the platform is preaching heresy and might be a false prophet.

The 15 Points of Walk Teaching and Practice

The following 15 points define the major teachings of the Walk. This is not an attempt to create an exhaustive description of all Walk theology. For a more complete look into Walk theology and history, please see the unpublished manuscript on the Walk by the Spiritual Counterfeits Project.[26] As a former member of the Walk for over 7 years, I can attest that this report by the SCP is a very accurate and fair description of that cult.

I have placed an asterisk (*) beside each point of Walk teaching that has an equivalent in the charismatic/prophetic movement.[27] The exact terminology may differ, but the ideas are essentially the same.

End-Time Elitism (Elijah Company). (*)

In the Walk it was known as the “Manchild Company”. Over the years this doctrine has also been known as “The Manifested Sons of God” (MSOG). This was one of the major heresies to come out of the Latter Rain, and has been picked up and repackaged over the years by various charismatic and prophetic groups. They will be an elite class of spiritual warriors with the power and anointing to lead the church to where it should be, establish the Kingdom of God and even inaugurate Christ’s reign on earth. It can take on a wide range of flavours and meanings, from a super-anointing on a spiritually empowered elite to “little Christ’s” – manifestations of Christ incarnate. The Joel’s Army (Gideon’s Army, Elijah Company) talk in charismatic prophetic circles is essentially the same idea.

This was one of the major premises behind the Walk, and Stevens taught a very extreme flavour of this concept. His followers could become the Word of God made flesh in the same sense Christ was. This was essentially the meaning behind the term “Living Word” as used in the name of his church: physical expressions of the Word like Christ. They could become ‘little Christs’ who will have the power of God surpassing anything ever seen before in the church. Many even saw this as possibly representing a spiritual second coming of Christ in the group before He returns physically.

Kingdom Now/Dominion Theology. (*)

Often coined “Kingdom Breakthrough”. The victorious church, lead by the spiritual elite (The Manchild Company) will establish the Kingdom of God on Earth before Christ physically returns. “Breaking through” into the Kingdom was in fact what the Walk was all about. The Walk’s entire reason for existence was to push Stevens into the Kingdom, mostly through the prayer of “violent intercession”. Once in the Kingdom, Stevens would bring the rest of the Walk in, by “imparting” it to his followers. Sort of a push/pull approach. The Walk would push Stevens in, and then Stevens would pull the rest in. Stevens was often likened to the point of the spear, with the Walk as the shaft, that would be thrust into the Kingdom level and achieve “Kingdom breakthrough”.

Spiritual Violence.

“Violence” was common Walk verbiage for the level of spiritual intensity required to achieve Kingdom breakthrough. The Kingdom was a new spiritual level that the church needed to attain, and only those who were intense enough could breakthrough into it. This required very intense prayer known as ‘violent intercession’. Passivity – lacking the necessary spiritual intensity – was seen as one of the greatest threats to the success of the Walk. Stevens and Walk leaders would often rant against passivity. It was a grave offense to be passive, and members were always being exhorted to rise up into greater levels of intensity, otherwise we ran the risk of failing to achieve Kingdom breakthrough. Passivity was overcome within us by entering into intense, violent prayer, which involved stamping our feet, shouting, slicing the air with excited hand gestures and other hysterical behavior. Wild shouts such as: “We rebuke all passivity today!” was a common feature of corporate prayer.

Revelation Knowledge and Special Revelation. (*)

Divine knowledge from God revealed directly to the human mind apart from the written Word; a direct, mystical insight into truth that bypasses the rational processes of intellect, logic, reason and learning. When people received this kind of revelatory insight, they would know intuitively something was true irregardless of Scripture, reason, commonsense, or any objective evidence of truth.

‘Getting the revelation’ is an inner mystical sense confirming the truth of a special revelation or of Scripture. Knowing the Bible and believing it because it is God’s Word was not good enough in the Walk and considered inferior to ‘getting the revelation’ of a truth. A person needed to receive a subjective inner witness of the truth that confirmed God’s Word. This was a spiritual insight that enabled them to ‘see’ the truth for themselves, as opposed to believing it because God said it.

In order to receive revelation knowledge, all a person had to do was simply ‘tune in’ to the ‘flow of revelation’ that was constantly coming from heaven. This was a mystical ‘openness’ in the spirit which could be learned, and had nothing to do with studying the Scriptures and the cognitive faculties. The Walk taught that reasoning things out, even through knowledge of Scripture, would only hinder a person’s ability to receive revelation. All that was required to ‘receive the revelation’ was a spiritual capacity to open up to it and allow it to flow into our minds and spirits. Special revelation did not necessarily have to line up with Scripture, and was quite independent of it.

Restoration of Apostles. (*)

The Walk taught that God is restoring the ministry of Apostles equal to spiritual authority and revelation to the first century Apostles. It was believed that the full restoration of apostolic ministry was necessary to equip the church for the fulfillment of its purpose and bring it to maturity. God was laying a new foundation for the church because the old foundation was no longer adequate for the new day dawning. Stevens was, naturally, the Apostle to the Apostles. [28]

Restoration of the Prophetic Office. (*)

Along with the new order of Apostles, God was also restoring the full office of the Prophetic ministry. These are prophets equal in stature to the Old and New Testament Prophets of the Bible. A new revelation is needed for a new day, and God is raising up Prophets and Apostles to bring it. The Bible isn’t sufficient for the new task today. In the Walk, we needed a ‘fresh’ word each week. Stevens’s ministry churned out a vast number of tapes and booklets, and each week there was a new tape with Stevens’s latest, hottest revelation. Stevens’s weekly messages were taken verbatim as direct revelation from heaven. We all became prophecy junkies as we waited each week for the latest prophetic word.

Resurrection Life.

Stevens taught a doctrine called ‘Resurrection Life’ that he picked up from some of the more extreme elements of the Latter Rain movement. It is the idea that we could enter into our resurrected (heavenly) bodies now, without having to die through a process of evolving spiritual states. Entering our heavenly bodies would bring us supernatural power and immortality. It was never very clear how this would happen, except that when we finally attained enough faith and spiritual intensity, we would break through into a higher spiritual level where resurrection life could be appropriated.

Spiritual Warfare. (*)

Rebuking the enemy and tearing down demonic strongholds through intense prayer known as ‘violent intercession’. Intense, focused prayer was required to bind the enemy and ‘loose the word’, thereby releasing the purposes of God and overcoming the Devil so that the Kingdom of God could advance against the forces of darkness.

Stevens often talked about the “Nephilim”, and had whole tapes and booklets devoted to this topic. Nephilim were human agents and channels of demonic forces. Praying against people identified as Nephilim was common practice in order to bind them and block their influence.

The Living (Rhema) Word. (*)

God is speaking a new living ‘Rhema’ word for today through His Apostles. The ‘Living Word’ was as much the Word of God as was the Bible, but better because it is ‘alive’ whereas the Bible was a dead letter. “The letter kills, but the Spirit brings life.”[29] This verse was often used by Stevens, which he twisted to mean that we needed living Apostles and Prophets today to speak the word so that the Word of God would be alive. Without the new Apostles the Bible remained a dead text, mere ink on paper. The word lived in the flesh of Apostles and Prophets.

Impartation. (*)

The idea that one person can give spiritual gifts, anointings, attributes or qualities to another through prayer and the laying on of hands. Superficially it sounds like Rom.1:11, but in practice it was used as a short-cut to instant spiritual growth by ‘zapping’ spiritual values[30] from person to person. It was very common in Walk services to have personal ministry time in which an apostle, prophet or “mature brother” would impart spiritual gifts and attributes to another. The ability for leaders to ‘replicate’ themselves by imparting what they had to younger ‘Timothy’s’ was considered crucial to the future success of the Walk.

Positive Confession (Word of Faith). (*)

This teaching is also known as positive proclamations or prophetic proclamation. It was believed that speaking ‘words’ of positive confession had creative power. We could ‘speak’ things into being, especially in the unseen realm, but also in more practical areas such as finances. This was tied in very closely with Stevens’s Living Word teaching. Because God was in us, our words had the same creative power in our mouths that God has when He speaks things into existence. Commonly used prayer lingo associated with this belief was as follows: “Loose the word!”, “Loose faith!” or “We speak faith!” or “We speak release tonight.” or “We proclaim…” and “We claim…” Prayer was usually about loosing and speaking things into reality in the spiritual realm.

Don’t Think. (*)

Don’t think about it, just open up and accept it. The new revelation could only be received by opening up to it and accepting it, not by the understanding or studying the Scriptures. Stevens had a favorite saying: “People would be better off if they would stand on their heads.” By this he meant put down your intellect and stop thinking so much. Thinking too much blocked your ability to receive divine revelation. The Berean spirit was heavily discouraged, and any kind of questioning of doctrine was taken as a personal assault on Stevens.

Signs Ministry. (*)

Stevens taught that the Holy Spirit would direct us through various physical sensations in our bodies. He often experienced these sorts of signs himself. For instance, a headache meant spiritual assault or witchcraft was coming against you. Stevens also taught how to interpret the color of people’s aura’s in order to discern their spirit. Red in a person’s aura meant they were rebellious, for instance.

Personal ‘words’ of direction. (*)

It was a common practice in the Walk to give individuals personal prophetic direction during a church meeting. Personal prophetic words were a common feature of church services. The group would often enter into a period of personal ministry in which the group would pray and prophesy over an individual. During this time the other members of the group would give personal messages of future direction and encouragement to the individual being ministered to. A common feature of these messages was to reveal what that person’s future ministry was to be and what their spiritual gifts and abilities were. These words of direction could often be very long a detailed.

The Religious Spirit. (*)

The ‘old order’ (Babylon) was what God did in previous generations, and ‘religious’ people were still ‘bound’ to it through fear and legalism. According to the Walk, religious people are characterized by fear and suspicion of anything new; a rigid, legalistic outlook characterized by an unwillingness to move with the Spirit into the ‘new thing’ God was doing. Religious people were seen as spiritually dead because they were into the legalism of Biblical text, but not the life and power of the ‘Living Word’. This religiosity blinded them to the new thing God was doing in the Walk. Hence, anyone who opposed the Walk was blind and religious.

In the Walk, a religious spirit was the antithesis of true spirituality. Therefore, it only followed that anything offensive to a religious person must be good. It was also recognized that religiosity was common to human nature and something to be guarded against personally. So Walk people were always on the guard for any development of religiosity within themselves. Any kind of offensive, irreligious behavior was seen as helping to thwart our own tendencies towards religiosity and cultivate greater personal spirituality. Hence, Walk people strove to be as irreligious as possible and cultivated very offensive behavior. Swearing, rude and offensive behavior was very common in the Walk at all levels. Stevens himself frequently swore from the pulpit during sermons.

Walk Talk

A glossary of some common Walk terminology and catch phrases.

“Appropriate”:Claiming and acquiring spiritual gifts, power and attributes

“Babylon”:Old order. Most other churches, especially those who opposed the Walk.

“Be Christ!”, “Be the Word!”: Become the Word made manifest in human flesh like Christ.

“Blowouts”:Those who left the Walk. Spiritual failures that just didn’t have the right stuff.

“Breakthrough!” or “Kingdom Breakthrough”Entering into new spiritual levels.

“Loose”: Such as “Loose the word!” or “We loose faith.” Releasing the spiritual power of the thing loosed in order to create the reality of it. A method of positive proclamation.

“Nephilim”:Human channels of demonic spirits. Most anyone who opposed the Walk.

“Passivity”:Lacking in spiritual violence. A big no-no.

“Rebuke”: “We rebuke passivity tonight.” “We rebuke the Devil.”

“Resurrection power”:The spiritual power of the new kingdom age.

“Violence”:Spiritual intensity necessary for ‘breakthrough.’

“We speak…”: Such as “We speak faith to so-and-so.” A method of imparting something to a person or speaking it into existence in the spiritual realm.

Red Flags of Deception

The following is a list of ‘Red Flags’ that are symptoms of deception in a person or group. In developing this list, I was concerned, not so much with addressing specific doctrines, but in identifying characteristics that are symptomatic of deception. I started writing this list when I noticed the many similarities between the Walk and the prophetic movement gaining momentum in Vineyard/Charismatic circles. These characteristics of deception predominate in Charismatic/Vineyard groups and in the Walk.

Spiritual elitism. This is the root of many delusions. Any kind of elitist belief is a certain indication of deception. Elitism is the belief that God has given a certain group special revelation/power/anointing that other Christian groups or previous generations have not entered into. They are on the spiritual cutting-edge, rising to spiritual levels not attained by other groups. It’s often dressed up as “Joel’s Army”, “Gideon’s Army”, and Elijah Companies of super anointed end-time warriors. Elitism is seen today in the ‘this-is-the-greatest-generation-ever’ kind of preaching we often hear. It can be found in the need to search out so-called ‘deeper’ truths and discover new, hidden mystical insights.

A tendency to marginalize the written Word. Watch out for any talk that plays down devotion to Scripture, such as “God is bigger than the Bible” or “God is doing a new thing, so put away your Bibles.” Marginalizing the written Word can take many forms:

a) Ignoring the Word. Neglecting private Bible study in daily life is a strong symptom of deception.

b) Disregarding the Word. A careless attitude towards obedience. I’ve seen examples of this in wild revival meetings in which people mockingly quote the verse, “Let all things be done decently and in order”, while they enjoy a good laugh over their disorderly and drunken behavior. Any teaching that plays down our requirement to be doers of the Word is a sure sign of delusion.

c) Deceived groups that marginalize the Word are often those who have an emphasis on prophecy. Beware of any emphasis on the revelatory, prophetic word, especially where there is a sidelining of the written Word. We are not to despise prophecy, but the real meat of the Word that nourishes the saints and builds them up in the faith is the written Word of God, not the prophetic. Teaching that would make Christians dependant on prophets or apostles for ‘current’ truth effectively marginalizes the Word of God.

d) “Fools despise knowledge.” Any kind of talk that does not give the Word the high regard it is due, effectively marginalizes the Word and is a sure sign that deception is at work in the group. As the Word says, “Choose my instruction instead of silver.” Love it more than anything else.

Prayerlessness in private. Neglect of private prayer time, alone with God, is a strong indication of deception. If it is prevalent across a church or movement, it indicates deception is taking hold of that group. Please note that deceived people will often continue to attend and even enjoy public church functions, especially when there is good sound, light or music – but private quite time loses its appeal.

Disdain for Berean[31] spirited searching of the scriptures. Any kind of anti-Berean, anti-discernment teaching that discourages people from questioning what is going on or being taught is a sure sign of deception. If you ever hear the leadership of your church group say anything along the lines of “put away your Bibles”, or “don’t worry about being deceived”, then head for the exit as fast as you can.

An inability to separate Godly criticism of their words from personal attack. Equating ‘Berean’ (Acts 17:11) activity with criticism. Such leaders may often talk about the ‘Jezebel spirit’ and the ‘accuser of the brethren’ and warn people about moving in a fault finding or critical spirit. What they are driving at is that if you question what is going on, or challenge what is being taught, you are being critical and run the risk of incurring the Lord’s disfavor.

Lack of accountability. One common trait among the new wave of apostles and prophets rising to prominence these days is that they do not like to be held accountable for their teachings and failed prophecies. Any criticism of their teachings and prophetic utterances is taken as an attack against their ministry.

Discernment primarily the prerogative of leadership. A tendency to see discernment as a special gift or anointing not available to everyone to the same degree, or that increases with higher spiritual office. The ‘higher’ you are on the prophetic ladder, the more discerning you are. Since leaders supposedly have better discernment as per their higher office, followers tend to trust the opinions of their leaders over their own, since the ‘apostle’ or prophet must have better understanding anyway due to their higher standing in the spiritual ranks[32]. Believers are not encouraged to trust their own discernment, or are encouraged only so long as it agrees with the overall word as set forth by the leaders. Discernment among the ranks becomes little more than a faculty (an inner witness of the spirit) that confirms what the Apostle or Prophet is saying.

Any form of Mystery Religion. A mystery religion is a religion that has successive levels of knowledge and ‘deeper’ truths, which are not necessarily available to all, at least not at first. Those in higher levels will know things not revealed, nor available, to lower levels. A new ‘believer’ comes in on the ground floor, and then progresses up through successive levels of spiritual understanding and empowerment as he is introduced to the ‘deeper’ truths.

Heightened interest with spiritual levels and rankings. Higher ‘spiritual’ rank is equated with greater closeness to God. Gifts and callings are typically ranked, and those higher in rank are seen as closer to God in some practical way, such as hearing from God more frequently and being more privy to God’s inner secrets. Those on higher spiritual levels have a privileged access to God that is not available to those holding lesser callings. As a result of their higher standing or special calling, God visits them more often and they receive greater mystical experiences than the rest.

Heightened interest in dreams, visions, new revelations and novel insights. This may not necessarily be explicitly stated in their Creed, and they may claim to believe the Bible as the Word of God. But in actual practice dreams, visions and revelations are the preferred stock-in-trade over sound Bible teaching and exposition of the basics.

An increase in subjectivity. Looking for subjective impressions, personal ‘prophetic’ words and ‘revelation’ for guidance and direction. Seeking the mystical ‘inner voice’ as guide over the written Word. You can be sure that if a person is seeking new personal ‘words’, it is because they are not in the Word, and serious deception cannot be long avoided.

Detractors dismissed as having inferior vision. They see themselves as being in tune with God, and anyone who is also in tune with the Divine will agree with them. Detractors are obviously not in tune with God and have inferior vision. This sets up a very neat circular reasoning that is almost impossible to get past. It is a defensiveness which is very difficult to penetrate, because they are convinced that detractors don’t have the same level of anointing or discernment as they have. As they see it, if detractors did have the same level of anointing, they’d be in agreement. They dismiss any criticism of their teaching or conduct as bitterness, jealousy or fault finding, while they themselves feel they have very sharp spiritual perception. People are truly discerning only as long as they support their movement.

Dismissive attitude towards detractors. Detractors given derogatory labels, such as ‘religious’, ‘old order’, ‘old wineskins’, or ‘Pharisees’. Detractors denounced as not being able to ‘handle it’, or they have a ‘Jezebel spirit’, or a ‘spirit of criticism’. They are ‘accusers of the brethren’, that sort of thing. Threats of God’s judgment on detractors and critics are a sure sign of a cultic mindset and delusion.

A ‘get-on-board-or-else’ mentality. A fear that you’ll miss God’s new move and be left behind if you don’t join up. God is doing a new thing and if you do not go along with it, regardless of how long you’ve been faithfully serving God over the years, God will pass you by and you’ll get left in the dust.

New thingism. God is doing a ‘new thing’ and you’d better get with it. There is now a further requirement if you want to remain a first class Christian and in God’s highest favour, which is to be a part of the new thing represented by the group. If you don’t come along, you run the risk of God passing you by.

A special anointing. A certain person or group has been anointed by God to introduce something to the rest of the Body. God has given it to them, and other believers can come to them to ‘get it.’

A priesthood. Placing a person or group in an exalted status with God, so that they become special intermediaries, is a sure sign of delusion. False movements and false religions invariable try to interject some kind of priesthood between the believer and God. This is seen whenever a person or group claims to have received something from God that can be received from their hands. They become an intermediary between you and Jesus Christ if you want more of God, and people are encouraged to go to the ‘anointed’ of the Lord to get it.

We see this today in certain revival circles where it is necessary to get more from God at the hands of a specially chosen vessel. Worship leaders have ‘an anointing’ to lead us into the presence of God. Prophets and apostles have a privileged access to receive things from God that the rest of the church needs. False religion always reverts to some form of human priesthood.

“Don’t think about it, just jump in” type of teaching that encourages people to throw caution to the wind. Encouraging followers not to worry or think things through, that God won’t allow them to be deceived. Just jump in before it’s too late or you may miss the boat.

Glorification of the vessel. An excessive focus on the ‘anointed’ person of God.

An excited interest in peripheral subjects not central to the gospel. A de-emphasis on the central themes of the gospel. They claim to agree with the gospel, but the bulk of their teaching, writing and prophetic messages show a greater interest in peripheral topics, novel insights and new revelation.

May talk unity, but bring division along lines of gender, age, race or nationality.

Watch out for leaders who love to surround themselves with minions who affirm their special anointing.

More interest in breaking through to new levels and remaking the church along new lines rather than reaching the lost with the good news of Jesus Christ.

False spirits love to show off and love center stage. They love to parade their subjective impressions and experiences up front for others to see. Publicly sharing highly subjective impressions and insights that cannot be proved or disproved one way or the other is a real “Red Flag”.

Conference chasing. Running from place to place to meet God. Any emphasis on experiencing God corporately more than privately is a symptom of delusion. Whenever people need to go to a conference or certain location to receive a ‘fresh’ touch, something is very wrong.

There is a whole generation of believers now who are bored with ‘quiet time’ alone with God, who don’t know how to meet God in the prayer closet, and can only meet with God and experience Him in public settings that provide the right mood and atmosphere, usually involving the right music. The reason so many are chasing God at conferences is because they are not in the Word and prayer at home.

The ‘anointed’ leader has a privileged access, a hot relationship, with God that the rest have yet to attain. They get angelic visitations, dramatic visions and prophetic insights, and they publish ‘prophetic bulletins’ to keep others abreast with what God is doing. Because the apostles and prophets are in such a privileged position of receiving the latest hot word from God, the rest are reduced to second hand status, anxiously awaiting the latest prophetic bulletin. Watch for groups that tend to place emphasis on the leaders anointing or relationship with God. This results in Christians running to conferences for a ‘fresh touch’ from those who seem to have ‘it’.

The Holy Spirit is seen more as coming to bring an experience rather than a greater understanding of the Scripture.

A tendency to distinguish between people who accept their movement as a true move of God and those who don’t.

Beware of any dichotomy between the Spirit and the mind. Any anti-intellectual position, such as the belief held in many charismatic circles today that exercising the mind will hinder the Holy Spirit, is a real indication of deception. Deceivers like to parrot phrases like: “God will offend the mind to reveal the heart.” This cute little mantra often repeated in certain revival groups sounds very spiritual, but is very false. A careful reading of the Word tells us the truth: God will inform the mind to convince the heart. Jesus often did offend the Pharisee’s – by telling them the truth! The Holy Spirit leads people to Christ by shining the light of God’s Word into their minds and convicting them of its truth.

Characteristics of a Cultic Mindset

The difference between a cult and a legitimate group is relationship, not doctrine. Although it will usually follow that a cultic group will also endorse heretical doctrine, that is not what makes it a cult. Other, non-Christian religions will embrace doctrines contrary to Christian faith. That does not necessarily make them cults. A group is defined as cultic by the dependant/controlling relationship that forms between the leader of the group and his followers. The leader acquires an inappropriate level of control over the individuals of a group by fostering personal dependence upon him as the source and definer of truth. A cultic group has a strong, influential leader who knows how to encourage followers to remain personally dependent upon him for truth, purpose and guidance.

In developing this list, I was more interested in showing the characteristics of a cult as opposed to addressing specific heretical teachings; cultic symptoms rather than specific doctrinal aberrations.

My reason for this approach is twofold: First, specific heresies will change from one cult to another, but there are certain characteristics which remain fairly consistent between cults by which a cultic group can be identified. Secondly, and perhaps more ominously, large segments of the charismatic church are becoming very cultic in practice even though they may claim to believe the major tenets of Christian faith. Most of these traits were very characteristic of the Walk, and are becoming very common in Vineyard and Charismatic circles.

Loyalty to charismatic leadership over Scripture. The primary characteristic of a cultic mindset is devotion to leadership over an objective standard of truth. Cultic followers have an excessive devotion to popular teachers, and are unwilling or disinclined to question them. They place too much trust in leadership without exercising independent, critical thought that resorts to objective standards of information outside of the group. This mindset is very predominant in Vineyard and Charismatic circles, seen in the almost blind trust placed in prophetic leadership. This is evident in their willingness to believe what they are told, as long as the right person says it. They are disinclined to exercise independent, critical thought and search the scriptures to see if what is being taught is true.

Believing what’s said based on WHO says it. Truth is determined by what the leaders say. The cultic-mindset determines the acceptability of what is said more by who says it rather than how well it conforms to the Word of God. This mindset is predominant in the Walk, and has become predominant in Vineyard/Charismatic and “TB” circles. Today, anyone can say almost anything in a Charismatic/ Vineyard crowd and get away with it, as long as they have the right type of ‘loving’, charismatic personality and appear to move in spiritual gifts. In other words, as long as the ministry package looks good, they tend to accept the contents of the teaching with little question.

An unwillingness to question leaders. Idolizing leaders and placing them on a pedestal. Quick to excuse and overlook their faults. Leaders will often take doubts and questions as a personal attack. Questioning the leader is viewed as rebellion, stubbornness, or spiritualized as a demonic ploy to undermine ‘God’s anointed’.

Fear of disapproval by the group. A fearfulness of saying something that the leaders and/or others in the group may not approve of.

Elitist and exclusive. They think of themselves as the spiritual cutting-edge. An excessive need for acceptance and belonging to an ‘inner circle’. A fear of being left out of Gods new thing is one expression of this.

Dismissive attitude towards those outside the group. A disregard for what others say and think who are not in the group.

A polarized “In or Out”, “Us” versus “Them” attitude towards those outside the ‘movement’. Those outside the ‘move’ are given derogatory labels. It is considered that those outside don’t have what it takes to be apart of the superior goals of the group. This is often seen in the ‘get-on-board-with-this-move-or-you’ll-miss-it’ style of preaching often seen in charismatic circles.

Those outside the group just don’t understand.

Lack of tolerance for dissent. Dissenters threatened with divine punishment. Dissent, doubt and questioning are not tolerated and perceived as a personal attack on the leadership. They have difficulty separating the message from the messenger. (Need I bother pointing out here that “TB” revival leaders are well-known for attacking dissenters, and threatening them with judgment from God?)

Rational thought is discouraged. Group experience over loyalty to truth. Don’t think about it, just jump in. Don’t stop to analyze, just be open to what the ‘spirit’ is doing.

The superior ends of the group justify the means. Revival leaders are well known for their pragmatic approach to the ‘truth’. If it works, it’s OK.

Group leaders determine how followers should think and what is ‘true’. Truth and reality (paradigm) are determined within the context of the group. People with a cultic-mindset tend to submerge their own thoughts under the thoughts of the leader and group. They have greater confidence in the opinions of others than of their own.[33]

A lack of discretion and independent thought. Pro.2:11 states that “discretion will protect you”. Discretion is the ability to think for yourself; to exercise independent thought or action according to one’s own judgment. Cultic followers are noticeably lacking in this ability,[34] so they are easily persuaded by a dynamic and charismatic leader. They find it difficult to stand back with a measure of detachment and evaluate things with a cool head in the light of God’s Word.

Cultic persons gravitate towards dependence upon a ‘priesthood’ for their contact with God. This ‘priesthood’ can take the form of an ‘anointed’ person, a prophet, an apostle, or anyone who receives from God for the follower. Cultic persons place excessive trust in the leader and the leader’s so-called contact with God.

Accusative self-doubt in relation to leadership. It can take the form of self-doubting questions such as: Who do I think I am, anyway? Who am I to question what the leaders are saying? What makes me think I was right and so many big name ministries are wrong?

Lack of recourse and accountability outside the group. Little if any accountability outside the group. Members of the group take little recourse outside the group for information or help as far as the defining ‘truths’ and purpose of the group are concerned.

Spiritual Drunkenness: Last Call for the Sober to Flee

The Bible has a lot to say about drunkenness, spiritual or otherwise. And none of it is good. With the Biblical tools we have available today, there is no reason for anyone to be deceived about the “Laughing Revival”. My Bible and concordance was all I needed to find out for myself the truth behind so-called ‘spiritual drunkenness’.

One night, while I was still unsure about the ‘Laughing Revival’ (and frankly, I was at that time still leaning in favour of it and hoping to have my suspicions allayed) I sat down with my NIV Bible and concordance and simply did a word study to see what the Bible had to say. I wasn’t expecting to find much when I started, and once I got past the 2 or 3 isolated verses favored by TB supporters (we’ll look at those last), I was very surprised to discover just how much the Bible had to say regarding this phenomena.

Spiritual drunkenness is a sign of a deep spiritual sleep and blindness:

Isaiah 29:9-14. “Be stunned and amazed, blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not from wine; stagger, but not from beer. The Lord has brought over you a deep sleep: he has sealed your eyes (the prophets);” Verses 11,12 further describe these people as being unable to understand God’s Word. Then, verse 13: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men. Therefore … the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”

I don’t know how much clearer the Word of God could be. Spiritual drunkenness (“drunk, but NOT from wine”), far from being a sign of God’s blessing and favor, is a sign that the following spiritual conditions and judgments have fallen upon a group professing to worship God: 1) they are blind, 2) they have fallen into a deep sleep spiritually, 3) their prophets are blind, 4) they’ve lost the ability to properly understand God’s Word (sealed v.11,12). The reason for all this is given in verse 13. This group of people has, over time, professed to love and worship God, but they have departed from obedience to His Word and have insisted on trying to come to God on their own terms.

Spiritual drunkenness is a sign of being under God’s judgment:

Isaiah 28:1,3. “Ephraim’s drunkards”. Ephraim was a name for the northern tribes of Israel, who were at that time seriously backslidden and about to be judged. Obviously, the Bible is not casting ‘drunkard’ in a good light.

Is.49:26. “drunk on their own blood” in judgment.

Is.51:21. “made drunk, not with wine” under God’s judgment.

Is.63:6. “in my [God’s] wrath I made them drunk and poured their blood on the ground.”

Jer.48:26. “Make her drunk, for she has defied the Lord.” Israel’s neighbour, Moab, is made drunk because she has defied the Lord!

Deut. 29:18-21. This passage describes a person who invokes the promises and protection of God’s covenant, but disregards it’s conditions. He has turned away from obedience to the Lord, yet invokes the Lord’s blessing and protection and thinks to himself: “I shall have peace.”

Verse 19 (NKJV). “ ‘I shall have peace, even though I follow the dictates of my heart’ – as though the drunkard could be included with the sober.”

Verse 19 (NIV). The NIV footnote offers the following alternative translation: “ ‘I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way’ – in order to add drunkenness to thirst.”

Deut.29:18-21 indicates that spiritual drunkenness is a sign that the drunkards have invoked the blessing of the covenant for themselve’s, yet walk after their own heart.

Jeremiah 51: A warning to flee because a greater judgment is coming!

I recommend a careful reading of Jeremiah 51, with particular attention paid to verses 6-9 and 37-45, in conjunction with Rev. 17:1-6, 18:1-8. Babylon was a real city in Jeremiah’s day that the Lord was about to judge, but Babylon is also a Biblical type of apostate religion.

Note: For those who are unsure about using the Old Testament in this manner, please look at the following passages: 1 Cor.10:6,11; 2 Peter 2,3; Heb.10:29-31, 2:1-3, 12:25-27 and Jude. Paul and the other NT writers clearly considered that the judgments of God recorded in the OT were still very relevant warnings to us under the NT. See also 2Tim.3:16 “ALL scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”.

Jer. 51:6-9:

v6,8,9: Spiritual drunkenness is an indication that the church is about to be severely judged, and a warning to the sober minded who still remain to get out before it is too late. “Flee from Babylon! Run for your lives!”

v7,8: “Babylon was a gold cup in the Lord’s hand[an instrument of judgment]; she made the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore they have now gone mad. Babylon will suddenly fall and be broken.” Not only was Babylon under judgment, but she was an instrument of judgment in the Lord’s hands. Certain ‘revival’ centers made the whole earth drunk, as multitudes poured in from around the globe to partake. The results of many deluded pastors who ‘fetched’ the blessing in Toronto/Pensacola and brought it back to their home church can only be described as ‘madness’, as hundreds of churches were devastated.

Jer. 51:37-45:

v37,38: “Babylon will be a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals,…Her people all roar like

lion cubs.” – animal noises, roaring like lions.

v38a: “while they are AROUSED, I will set out a FEAST for them” – it’s party time!

v38b: “and make them DRUNK,” – spiritual drunkenness!

v38c: “so that they SHOUT with LAUGHTER” – ‘holy’ laughter.

“then SLEEP forever and not awake, declares the Lord.”

v40-44: And then final judgment is to follow, “I will bring them down…to the

slaughter…”

v45: The final call for God’s people to get out while they still can. “Come out of her, my

people! Run for your lives!”

This makes it pretty clear. Here we have a people being aroused to party, shout and laugh, roar like lions and get ‘drunk’ just before they are judged. The Bible describes in many places that immediately before severe judgment, people are given over to a “party” spirit: a fun-loving, amusement mad, self-gratifying wild party time! See Is.56:12; Amos 6:1-6; Micah 2:11; Is.22:2,13; The inhabitants of Jerusalem threw parties as the Babylonian army surrounded their city. Ezek.21:10 (Amp and NKJV) “Shall we then rejoice and make mirth?” [when the sword of judgment has been sharpened against us.]

More Old Testament references to drunkenness:

The following passages also refer to drunkenness as an indication or sign of being under the displeasure of God and judgment.

Ezekiel 23:33. “filled with drunkenness and sorrow, the cup of ruin and desolation”

Nahum 1:10, 3:11. Nineveh drunk under the judgment of God. “You too will become drunk”.

Hab.2:15-16.Woe to him who gives drink, making his neighbour drunk. Now it is your turn, drink and be exposed! The word ‘be exposed’ used here can also mean ‘stagger’ according to the NIV footnote.

Is.24:19-21. The earth reels like a drunkard under God’s judgment.

Joel 1:5, “Wake up, you drunkards.”

Ecc. 10:16-17. Blessed is the land who’s King is noble, who princes eat at the proper time for strength and NOT FOR DRUNKENNESS.”

Jer.13:13. The Lord fills the kings, priests and prophets with drunkenness before he judges them.

Amos 6:6. “You drink wine by the bowlful”

Micah 2:11. The deceiver says: “I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer!”

Is.56:9-12. “Let us drink our fill of beer!”

Biblical References to ‘staggering’:

Staggering ‘under the influence’ is a common occurrence at TB style revival meetings. Interestingly, the Bible also has a lot to say about staggering.

Job 12:25.“They grope in darkness with no light; he makes them stagger like drunkards.”

Psalm 60:1-3.“You have rejected us…you have given us wine that makes us stagger.”

Is 19:11-15. “the leaders of Memphis are deceived;…The Lord has poured into them a spirit of dizziness; they make Egypt stagger in all she does, as a drunkard staggers around in his vomit.” Clearly not a sign of God’s blessing, but of His judgment upon foolish and deceived leadership.

Is. 28:1-16. The drunkards of Ephraim… “stagger at seeing visions”, “reeling like drunkards”

Pro.24:11. “staggering towards slaughter”

Is.3:8. “Jerusalem staggers” under judgment because their words and deeds are against the Lord.

Jer.25:15-29. In this passage, the Lord has filled a cup filled with the wine of His wrath and makes the nations drink from it. Drinking from the cup of God’s wrath causes them to “stagger and go mad” before they are brought to judgment. V.27 “drink, get drunk and vomit, and fall to rise no more”

Is. 51:17. The cup of God’s wrath is “the goblet that makes men stagger.”

Roaring like a lion:

Jer.12:8 “she [my people] roars at me, therefore I hate her.”

Jer 52:38 the people of Babylon [who are under judgment] roar like lions

Zeph.3:1-4 “Woe to the city [referring to a wicked city under sentence of God’s judgement]…Her officials are roaring lions…”

Is. 5:25-30 Israel’s enemies roar like lions when they come to devour her.

Ezek.22:25 false prophets roar like lions.

I Peter 5:8 The Devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

Jer. 2:15 “Lions have roared” in judgement.

New Testament references to drunkenness:

Lk.12:45; Mt.24:48-50 – The unfaithful servant gets drunk.

I Cor 5:11; 6:10 – Drunkards will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Lk.21:34-36; Ro.13:11-14; Gal.5:19-21; 1Pet.4:3; I Thess.5:4-8. – Drunkenness is sinful and will be judged.

The Word of God clearly censors drunken behavior. There are an overwhelming number of verses in the New Testament which ascribe self-control, self-discipline, order, decency, and sobriety as a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Why then would the Holy Spirit ever induce people to mimic behavior that is censored in the Word and contrary to His own nature?

And finally, the two proof texts most often cited in support of ‘spiritual drunkenness’:

Let’s take a look at the 2 passages of Scripture used by “TB” supporters in an attempt to lend Biblical credibility to their drunkenness. They are Acts 2:13 and Eph. 5:18. We’ll take a look at each separately.

1) Acts 2:13, “They have had too much wine.”

We will look at the entire context of the chapter, from verse 1 to the end. In Acts 2:13, it was only the MOCKERS who were making fun that said they were drunk. I do not think we should take our queue from those mocking Peter and the believers. Other than that, there is no evidence in the text that they were acting like drunks, and all the evidence clearly indicates the opposite. Peter got up and preached a clear, coherent, hard-hitting gospel sermon that cut the Jews listening to him to the heart with conviction of sin. He did not display anything like drunken behavior. Peter’s behavior was nothing like the revival drunkards who love to stagger around, slurring and stammering so much that they can hardly put a coherent sentence together, let alone an entire sermon that can bring 3000 new converts into the Church in one day. The rest of the 120 that came out of the upper room with Peter were speaking in real foreign languages, clearly understandable to the foreigners visiting Jerusalem at the time, proclaiming the “wonders of God” (Acts 2:11). These people were anything but drunk! Whatever ‘spirit’ the Toronto people are moving in, it’s not the same Spirit at work in Acts 2.

2) Eph. 5:18, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Spirit.”

Read the surrounding verses from 5:8-5:20 carefully: Paul wasn’t comparing the condition of being Spirit filled to drunkenness, he was contrasting it! From verses 8 through 18, notice the contrasts he makes between pairs of opposites: light/darkness, wise/unwise, understanding/foolishness, and finally drunk/spirit filled. You were once darkness, but now you are light (v.8); not unwise, but wise (v.15); don’t be foolish, but understanding (v.17); don’t be drunk, instead be filled with the Spirit (v.18).

The verse says: “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Spirit.” Do not get drunk – it leads to debauchery! Notice the word ‘instead’, indicating a contrasting opposite. Paul was contrasting being filled with the Spirit to drunkenness, NOT likening it.

In their foolishness, revival drunks actually turn that around to say, “Woohoo, lets party and get drunk in the Spirit!” The debauchery Paul warns against in v.18 is just what we are seeing in the wild party atmosphere that now reigns in revival churches. The vast number of verses in the New Testament that tell us the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of order and sobriety are stunning. Self-control, sobriety, and order are fruits of the Spirit, and nowhere does it say the Holy Spirit is a spirit of drunkenness. Therefore, spiritual drunkenness, staggering, slurred speech cannot be the work of the Holy Spirit of God, as that would be inconsistent with the nature of the Holy Spirit according to Scripture. Surely what Isaiah said is true of them: “The Lord has brought over you a deep sleep: He has sealed your eyes … For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll.” (29:10,11)

Run for your lives!

I would like to offer the following conclusions based on the evidence of God’s Word.

1) ‘Drunkenness’ is a form of spiritual judgment upon a church or group professing the name of the Lord yet have departed from obedience to the truth. According to the Bible passages we have looked at, spiritual drunkenness is a form of God’s judgment on a church for the following reasons, as well as being a signal to others that the church has fallen into these conditions:

a) They are deceived.

b) They are blind – have little or no discernment left.

c) Their priests and prophets are backslidden.

d) They have tolerated false prophets in their midst.

e) They have tolerated bad, questionable teaching.

f) They give God lip-service, but have turned away from a carefulness to follow His law. In other words, they love to sing to the Lord on Sunday, but are carnal or even sinful through the week.

g) They want to serve and worship the Lord on their own terms; set their own altars.

h) They have ignored the Lord’s Word.

i) They have sought experience over truth.

j) Their shepherds are asleep, and have allowed the enemy in.

2) ‘Drunkenness’ is a signal that another, much more severe judgment is coming!

More ominously, in these Bible passages, drunkenness preceded severe judgment. It is a signal that much greater judgment will follow the drunken party.

3) ‘Drunkenness’ is a last call to get out!

Finally, I believe it is a last call to the sober minded who still remain in these churches to get out as fast as they can. It’s a clear signal to flee while you still can because time is running out fast. In Jer.51, the drunken party (v.39) preceded final judgment (40-44). Other passages listed above bear this pattern out as well. Verse 45 – “Come out of her, my people! Run for your lives! Run from the fierce anger of the Lord.” and again in v.6 the call is repeated to “Run for your lives!” If these passages are to be believed, than spiritual drunkenness in a church is a warning from God to GET OUT NOW. Don’t hang around such churches even out of curiosity just to see what happens. From these verses, we can gather that it will not be safe to be in these groups when the next judgment arrives. There is no point in speculating what form the next wave of judgment may take, but it will be very severe and of such a nature that being in these groups when it comes will be incredibly dangerous and foolish. It would be foolish to take His Word lightly and disregard the clear warning signals God has given us.

Where the River of God Flows

“On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water ill flow from within him.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.” John 7:37-39

There is a lot of talk about the ‘river’ of God and intimacy with Christ these days. Christians by the thousands are flocking to conferences centers to swim in the river. The pursuit of God in this day involves chasing God from conference to conference seeking a fresh touch. I have no doubt that some do in fact have an encounter with God, because God is sovereign and He can meet His children anywhere, but on the whole this movement is deeply flawed and not born of the true Spirit of God. We can know this because it does not follow the Biblical pattern for gaining true closeness with God. Rather, it places emphasis on receiving ‘blessings’ and ‘fresh touches’ at the hands of another who seemingly has ‘it’.

Any true believer, who has come to Christ in genuine repentance and total surrender of life, will be born from above by the Spirit of God and experience the regenerating life of Christ within his soul. Through the new birth, the soul comes into vital contact with the living God, and the life of God flows in. This life brings a new power for holy living, new desires in life, and the old appetites for sin and the world fade away. Sometimes sin or carelessness in the life of the Christian will cause a blockage which hinders the life giving flow of God, but the remedy is repentance.

Blessed is the man

who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

or stand in the way of sinners

or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither.

Psalm 1:1-3

Our relationship with God can only be cultivated by devoting daily plenty of time to seek Him through prayer and study of His Word. It seems that Christians today have lost their patience for this, and would rather dash of to fun filled church meetings to have the ‘anointed’ man or woman touch them for a faster, more direct ‘impartation’. The prayer closets are empty, but church conferences are packed with seekers listening to talk of intimacy.

Having someone touch us, pray over us, impart blessings or a ‘fresh touch’ cannot make up for the neglect of our spiritual roots. Whatever these believers are experiencing, I doubt very much that it is bringing them into a truer knowledge of God. We must go to the seller of oil directly for ourselves in order to receive. What I see happening before me on such a large scale in what calls itself the Church of Jesus Christ has little to do with true intimacy with God, and is in fact a massive rebellion against the very intimacy they so loudly claim to seek. The foolish virgins are madly running around, looking for another to give them more oil. What a sad parody of the true relationship with God that Christ has made possible for us in the New Testament!

Feeling dry? Instead of running out to some conference to receive a ‘fresh touch’ from an ‘anointed’ person, examine your private devotional life. How’s your “Quiet Time”? Are you neglecting His Word? Ignoring Him through prayerlessness? Is there any sin? Any carelessness in devotion? Check for unforsaken sin or negligence of duty. Bring your sin to the cross and He has promised to forgive you and “give you grace to help.”

The true ‘River’ of God runs through the prayer closet, not a conference center. The single greatest reason so many Christians feel ‘dry’ is because they are not in the Word and in prayer at home. Consequently, they are easily seduced by the ‘Laughing Revival’ and other false movements. And they have tried to make up for this lack of spirituality in their private lives with lively, rousing public worship and busy activities.

Devote yourself daily to the holy task of knowing Him by seeking Him in His Word and prayer. Turn off the amusements of the world with which you normally entertain yourself, and learn to find all your delight in Him. True spiritual revival can only begin in the prayer closet. Then the Lord will be able to use you to reach the lost around you.

The law of the Lord is perfect,

reviving the soul.

The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy,

making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right,

giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the Lord are radiant,

giving light to the eyes.

The ordinances of the Lord are sure,

They are more precious than gold,

They are sweeter than honey,

By them is your servant warned.

Psalm 19:7-8,10-11

I think that one of the highest crimes in the church today is a leadership that encourages people to come out to church, or attend the latest conference, to receive a “fresh touch” at the hands of another, but does not teach nor encourage their people to get alone with God daily in prayer and the Word. What is presently being touted in revival circles as intimacy with God is not true intimacy at all but a cheap counterfeit experience which is leading the people away from a true relationship with Christ. The true River of God is flowing through my prayer closet.

[1] Please see the chapter below “Characteristics of a Cultic Mindset”.

[2] For ease of use the terms ‘charismatic’ or ‘charismatic movement’ in this article will include the entire broad spectrum of Vineyard, TACF, ‘Toronto’ churches, ‘Kansas City’ churches, as well as the Charismatic church.

[3] The Latter Rain was a revival in the late 40’ and 50’s beginning in North Battleford, Saskatchewan which quickly spread throughout the world. Although it seemed to start out well enough, it quickly developed many aberrant teachings and moved into heresy, and the occult.

[4] Branham not only influenced Stevens, but most of the ‘prophets’ and ministries that came out of the LR, including Paul Cain, until recently a major leader in the current prophetic movement in Kansas City. Branham, his life and teachings are well documented and easy to find on the web. See http://www.letusreason.org/Latrain4.htm

[5] The use of the term ‘violent’ in the Walk was unfortunate and can easily give those outside the Walk the wrong idea. The Walk never advocated physical violence as far as I know.

[6] This is very similar to Gnosticism, a prominent heresy in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and has survived in one form or another to this day. The Gnostic isn’t content to believe God by taking Him at His Word as written, but wants to have an inner mystical sense that tells him what is true so that he will ‘know’. The Gnostic requires a mystical experience to confirm the truth.

[7] Over the years I’ve noticed that this as a common characteristic of a certain class of Christian often involved with what is now popularly called ‘spiritual warfare’. They take a perverse pride in the demonic attacks they suffer, taking that as some kind of sign that they must really be moving in higher spiritual realms in order for the devil to take such notice of them. People like this can often be heard complaining about all the spiritual attacks they suffer.

[8] For a well researched account of the history and teachings of the Walk, please refer to the unpublished manuscript by The Spiritual Counterfeits Project.

[9] TACF was the progenitor of a phenomenon which began in early 1994 and quickly spread to other churches around the world. Characterized by outbreaks of uncontrollable laughter, and all manner of drunken and bizarre behavior, it came to be known as the Laughing Revival or the ‘Toronto Blessing’.

[10] The Toronto Revival came to be known as the Toronto Blessing or the Laughing Revival. It was characterized by outbreaks of uncontrollable laughter, people imitating animal behavior and noises, large numbers staggering and falling down, and all manner of drunken and bizarre behavior.

[11] This attitude is a classic example of spiritual elitism (Gnosticism), which makes it very difficult for those so affected to receive Godly and beneficial criticism from concerned Christians outside the ‘camp’.

[13] The few cases in Scripture of people receiving the Spirit at the hands of another were new converts who had not yet received the Holy Spirit. There are no examples of believers who have already received the Holy Spirit needing someone to touch them for more.

[14] I am not saying we don’t need to pray for one another. I am referring to imparting a touch from God or a deeper experience. We cannot ‘zap’ one another into a deeper relationship with Christ.

[15] For one Bible example, see Acts 8. Simon asked for the power of the Holy Spirit, but received a stern rebuke from Peter instead who discerned the impurity of Simon’s heart.

[16] Contrast this to the Book of Acts in which people receiving the Holy Spirit prayed. It makes one wonder what the “Blessing” received really is.

[17] Another chapter discusses at length the Bible passages on spiritual drunkenness, and so will not repeat the Scripture references here.

[18] See the subsequent chapter: Red Flags of Deception. It is a list of characteristics in common between Steven’s cult and the Charismatic Apostolic/Prophetic revival.

[19] The historical Latter Rain roots of the Walk and Kansas City have been well documented on the web and in many books.

[20] One notable example is William Branham, who heavily influenced both JRS and Paul Cain.

[25] One of the main characteristics of a cultic mindset is the propensity to believe what is said based on the personality of the speaker rather than an objective standard of truth. See the chapter: Summary of the cultic mindset.

[26] For a very complete and accurate description of Walk theology and history, I highly recommend the report produced by the Spiritual Counterfeits Project on the Walk: “John Robert Stevens and the Church of the Living Word (The Walk)”, unpublished manuscript from Spiritual Counterfeits Project, P.O. Box 4308, Berkeley, CA 94704

[27] I am not inferring by this that the charismatic movement endorses the Walk, or even knows about it. It is very likely that most people in the Vineyard and Charismatic movements have never heard of the Walk.

[28] It has even been suggested by some charismatic prophets that the new apostles and prophets today may even be greater than the first century Apostles.

[29] St. Paul was speaking of the Old Testament (the letter of the law) and the better New Testament we now have through Jesus Christ. He was in no way implying that the written word of God was dead.

[30] Values imparted could be just about any spiritual thing: spiritual gifts, anointing, power, resurrection life.

[31] Acts 17:11. The Christians in Berea were commended because when Paul came to them with the gospel they examined the Scriptures for themselves to see if what he said was true.

[32] I feel I must point out again here, that this is a highly cultic mindset, a chief characteristic of cult followers, AND IT PREDOMINATES IN THE VINEYARD and many CHARISMATIC church groups. This is not at all what the Bible means by submission and obedience to the Word and to those in authority!

[33] I am not suggesting here that we are to have that kind of arrogance that won’t listen to others. That’s not a healthy mindset either. Godly men and women will listen to, and give serious consideration to, the opinions of other godly people whom they know to be walking in holiness and obedience to the Word of God. But the criteria for judging what we think and what others tell us is the Word of God, not WHO says it.

[34] Discretion and independent thought is typically the first thing a cult seeks to remove from a new or potential convert, and it is one of the first things that have to be restored in an individual seeking to get out.

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

Want to stay comfortable in your (theologically shallow & Biblically illiterate) Christian beliefs? Even if those beliefs are not really based on God’s Word?? Of course you do! Here’s a guide that will keep you in the dark, and will help you to avoid the bothersome content of whichever discernment bloggers are currently bugging you:

Start with this assumption: There aren’t any false teachers. With this handy starting point everything else falls comfortably into place. Just tell yourself that people who proclaim a different Gospel are just… different. It’s like the difference between hotdogs and hamburgers. If there are no false teachers, then it logically follows that all discernment bloggers are wrong. Now you won’t have to consider what they say!

Go with the group. If the majority agrees with you, you must be right. Remember, Jesus wants you to follow the most popular teachers, even when they twist the Bible. Discernment bloggers are not popular, so they must be wrong. Now you won’t have to consider what they say!

Lump them all together. It’s true: some discernment bloggers are too extreme and exaggerate too much, or they go off on some crazy bunny trails; therefore you can ignore everything that everydiscernment blogger says (see points 1 & 2).

They are mean and angry, therefore, they are wrong. If you think they’re mean and angry… well, that means they are mean and angry. Now you won’t have to consider what they say!

Criticize their criticism. Discernment bloggers are not speaking in love when they call out false teachings and teachers, therefore you can ignore the actual content of what they say. Once you understand this you can freely criticize them, because it’s not unloving when you and your group does it.

1. “Discrimination” is a bad word in our cultural vocabulary. Our courts are filled with lawsuits based on discrimination. In a multi-cultural society we are taught to be tolerant of one another. To an extent this is appropriate. Our Constitution states that all men are created equally. Acts 10:34 says, “God is no respecter of persons” (KJV); He does not show partiality. Therefore we are not to discriminate racially, economically, socially or culturally.

2. In this passage, John teaches we must discriminate doctrinally. We must “test the spirits.” We must learn to discern between “the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” These 6 verses are a parenthesis on his discourse about love. Love evidences our fellowship with God but love can never be divorced from truth.

An elementary school class toured a medical facility. A child asked why the doctors and nurses were constantly washing their hands. The nurse replied, “We wash our hands for two reasons: we love health and we hate germs.” The Christian who abides in Christ and walks in the Spirit loves truth and hates error. He discriminates.

3. As Christians, we are called “believers.” However, every believer is also called to be an unbeliever when it comes to error. The Bible not only encourages us to believe but also to not believe. Just as we can inhale and exhale at the same time, we cannot believe truth and accept error. You cannot love until you reject hatred. You cannot pursue righteousness until you abandon evil. John Stott has written, “Unbelief can be as much a mark of spiritual maturity as belief.” (p.157).

4. With this background in mind, let’s examine the command to test the spirits and three criteria by which we test the spirits.

I. The Command to Test the Spirits (v.1).

A. Why We Are to Test the Spirits.

1. John is speaking to believers. He calls them “beloved.” He says we are not to “believe every spirit” but “test” them as to “whether they are of God.” Why? Because there are “many false prophets” who have “gone out into the world.”

2. Historically, the background of this passage is in the era in which the NT was being completed. There was no NT cannon. The apostles were still in the process of writing the inspired books and epistles that make up our understanding of the Christian faith.

3. God delivered His word to the congregations of believers in part by the verbal word of divinely gifted and inspired prophets. We read about the powerful and prevalent gifts in 1 Cor.12 and 14.

4. John warns his readers not to “believe every spirit” but to “test the spirits whether they are of God” because not everyone who claimed to be a prophet was divinely inspired.

5. There was and is the great necessity of critical assessment of spiritual teaching. There are still many false teachers in the world.

B. What it Means to Test the Spirits.

1. Every believer has the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. In 3:24, we learned last week that God “have given us… the Spirit.” In chapter 2, John calls the presence of the Spirit “the anointing which you have received from Him…”

2. God has given us His indwelling Spirit but John now points out that there are other “spirits” loose in the world. If we have the Spirit, we ought to “test the Spirits.”

3. Christians often test teaching by how it sounds, the words used, the inflection of the voice, the stories told, if it moves them or makes them feel good. None of these are appropriate tests. “Test” in v.4 means “to approve or examine.” The term was used of gold put in the fire to test its purity.

4. There are two categories of spirits operating in the world. When someone proposes to speak for God, you should “test the spirits” or you might “amen” the wrong spirit! I’ve been in some churches where they would “amen” almost anything.

5. Behind every prophet is a spirit. The great question is does the Spirit of God or an evil spirit lead this teacher. Before we trust any teacher, we must “test the spirits.”

6. Paul wrote in 1 Thess.5:20-22, “Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good.”

7. Jesus warned in Mt.7:15-16, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits…”

8. Paul warned the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:29, “For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.”

9. Peter also offered this warning in 2 Pet.2:1, “But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.”

10. Today there is still a great need for biblical discernment and discrimination. Many believers remain biblically illiterate and spiritually gullible. They naively accept any teaching as truth.

11. In Eph.4:14, Paul says that a sure sign of spiritual immaturity is “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.”

C. Failing to Test the Spirits is Dangerous.

Every good parent teaches his children to discriminate, to discern. We teach them to never take candy from strangers or accept a ride from strangers. Why? We know that there are evil people in the world who will take advantage of the naiveté of our kids. Too many of God’s kids have never learned to discern. They don’t discriminate. They are led astray by spiritual candy with a pseudo spiritual wrapper that is nothing more than sugarcoated error. It tastes good and makes them feel good for the moment but leaves them with nothing but empty calories. There is no spiritual nutrition because there is no truth.

1. If you follow the wrong spirit, you will pay a price. The famous circus entrepreneur, P.T. Barnum is quoted as saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Satan has many slick sideshows that sidetrack God’s children and rob them of their spiritual riches.

2. There are “many” false teachers in the world today. The spiritual candy store is full. Satan has all flavors of teachers and preachers ready to fill your spiritual appetite with a sugarcoated experience that will leave you with a bellyache. Test the spirits!

3. Remember when Moses first appeared before Pharaoh? He had a rod that turned into a snake. Satan was not to be outdone so the magicians’ rods turned to snakes too. He knows how to put on a good show, to entice and lure us away from the truth.

4. The reformers insisted that even the most humble of believers has “the right of private judgment.” John is writing to the “beloved,” all Christians. You don’t have to have a seminary degree to test the spirits. You don’t have to attend a spirit-testing seminar. Why? Because the Holy Spirit already resides within you.

5. In this church we wear the name Baptist but our allegiance is to the Bible. Just because it is a Baptist teaching does not necessarily mean it is a biblical teaching. We “test the spirits” and the chief measuring stick is the Scripture!

II. The Criteria for Testing the Spirits (vv.5-6).

A. How Do They View the Son of God? (vv.2-3).

1. The first test is the acknowledgement of the historical incarnation of Jesus, that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” Believers are to test for truth based on a teacher’s attitude concerning the person and work of Jesus. The first question is always “What do they believe about Jesus?” because if you are wrong about Jesus you are wrong about God.

2. In John’s day there was a teacher known as Cerinthus who taught that Jesus became the Messiah at His baptism. The Spirit came upon and at His death on the cross, the Spirit left Him and He died and remained dead, thus denying the resurrection. Cerinthus taught his disciples that Jesus did not come as God but became the Son of God for season. This was a terrible false teaching.

3. Jesus did not become the Son of God. He has always existed as the Son. He was incarnated, came “in the flesh” to be our Savior. Jesus was fully God and fully man. The baby in the manger humanly did not know anything but divinely knew everything. The baby in the manger could humanly be only one place at a time but divinely was omnipresent, equally present everywhere. The baby in the manger was humanly terribly weak and hopelessly dependent but divinely was all-powerful. The baby in the manger was humanly unable to speak but divinely had spoken the worlds into existence.

4. Many religions seek to honor Jesus as a great man or a great teacher but do not recognize Him for who He is. Some of them knock on your door with attractive publications and reverent, religious words but they don’t believe that Jesus is the “express image of His person” (Heb.1:3). They will say He is God’s Son but just for a time, not for eternity. They will agree that He is a great prophet, but they want to put him on the level of Mohammed or Confucius.

5. A teacher must not only acknowledge the incarnation as a historical fact but they must also “confess” Him. They must commit their lives to Him.

6. Satan and his demons acknowledge the historical incarnation but do not “confess” Him as Lord. Evil spirits readily recognized Jesus during His earthly ministry. In Mk.1:24 we read the words of one spirit encountered by Jesus, “Let us alone! What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come to destroy us? I know who You are; the Holy One of God!” In Mk.5:7 another said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.” James 2:19 remarks, “Even the demons believe; and tremble!”

7. Christian Scientists claim that Jesus was a man who received the Spirit of the Christ. Mormons say Jesus was a man who became god to show us how to become gods. Liberal theologians deny the virgin birth of Jesus and thus deny His incarnation and His deity. All these people fail to “confess” Him as God.

8. There are many people in church every Sunday who believe Jesus is the incarnate Christ but have never truly confessed Him.

9. The one who is led by the Holy Spirit will always “confess” Jesus. Jesus taught that the Holy Spirit would testify of Him and glorify Him. He said in Jn.16:13-14, “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.”

10. Paul states in 1 Cor.12:3, “No one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”

11. John says in v.3, to proclaim anything else about Jesus smacks of “the spirit of the Antichrist.” John has already mentioned the Antichrist in chapter 2. We know there is coming a world leader known as “the Antichrist,” however; “the spirit of the Antichrist” is “now already in the world.”

12. Be careful who you listen to that you do not take false medication.

B. What is Their Relation to the Spirit of God? (v.4).

1. In saying that believers “have overcome them” John is telling us that the false teachers have not succeeded in deceiving us.

2. False teachers are intimidating. They ask, “How can you believe that?” Raise the issue of creation in your biology classroom and watch them go into a frenzy. However, truth is absolute. It is immutable. It never changes.

If I play a B-flat on the piano you will hear a B-flat. A B-flat was a B-flat a thousand years ago and will still be a B-flat in the next millennium. It is absolute. Truth is absolute. Jesus is absolute. Heb.13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

3. Why have we “overcome” them? Not because we are smart, sharp or extremely intelligent, but because of the Spirit is within us. “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” Although, Satan is great, the Holy Spirit is greater!

We all have insulation in our houses. Insulation keeps the warm air in and the cold air out or visa versa. The Holy Spirit is the God-given insulation in the believer’s life who helps us keep out error. Have you ever heard a sermon or listened to religious discussion and thought, “Something doesn’t sound right?” That is the Holy Spirit filtering out the error and leading you in truth.

C. Are They in Harmony with the Word of God? (vv.5-6).

1. Notice three pronouns in vv.4-6. In v.4 John speaks of “you” or Christians. In v.5 he speaks of “they,” false teachers. In v.6, he speaks of “we” or the God-ordained apostles.

2. Now in v.5 we see that that “they” are heard by the world. The world recognizes its own people and listens to their message. One of the easiest ways to recognize a false teacher is by whether the world is comfortable with him.

3. When you are on the job speak about the truth of Jesus, someone will invariably say, “I don’t want to hear that!” Why? Truth divides. People want to feel good about themselves. Truth always makes them take a hard look at themselves.

4. When I prepare a sermon, I don’t ever ask, “Will they enjoy this message?” My goal is not your entertainment but your edification. Truth always will help you.

In order to survive under the water, you need special equipment. Scuba gear enables a diver to live and function in a hostile environment. In the same way, the Spirit of God and the Word of God enable us to function in the world.

5. When John says, “He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us,” it sounds somewhat arrogant. In effect, he is saying, “You can tell our message is God’s message because God’s people receive it.”

6. I could never say that. It would be prideful and presumptuous for me to say, “Whoever knows God agrees with me and only those who don’t know God disagree with me.” I’ve known a few preachers who’ve come close to that level of arrogance though.

7. John is an apostle; I am a pastor. John personally walked with Jesus. By inspiration, he wrote words of Scripture. To agree with the apostles is to agree with Scripture. Eph.2:20 says the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.”

8. Turn the page to 2 Jn.10-11. Churches met in houses in those days. John was saying don’t let him in the church. In this church we discriminate doctrinally.

9. Someone might say, “Truth, truth, truth! Pastor you major on truth, but what about emotion? What about feelings? I want to feel the presence of God.” Amen! I want to feel Him too. He gave me my emotions. I want both spirit and truth. However, I want to be certain what I am feeling. I don’t want to get off into subjective feelings until I am dead on in objective truth!

We can navigate a course by the use of a compass. A compass points to the north because of the magnetic field. Christians can navigate life by responding to the “true north” of the Word of God. We have the Word of God before us and the Spirit of God within us. Let us “test the spirits” and the teaching of anyone who claims to speak for God.

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